


No Greater Purpose

by theoneandonlyzoom



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Ending, Brainwashing, Ego is a smug son of a gun, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Mild Language, Spoilers, gaslighting?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-11-03 11:04:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10965930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoneandonlyzoom/pseuds/theoneandonlyzoom
Summary: Peter wakes in the darkness, alone and unarmed. The Guardians failed to destroy the core but his father's master plan didn't succeed either. Now they're stuck in an awkward kind of stalemate, one that leaves Peter at more of a disadvantage than Ego---at least if he wants his friends to survive.





	1. In the beginning, there was darkness...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyofpride](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofpride/gifts).



> A/N: My other half is busy studying for her Candidacy Exam, so Echidna is on hold until that is done. In the meantime, I thought I would explore more of the awkward dynamic between Peter and his biological father, because the 'Evil Father' troupe is one of my all time favorites.
> 
> Anyway, this story contains spoilers for GOTG vol. 2 if you haven't already seen it.

_“This is for the kids who know that the worst kind of fear isn't the thing that makes you scream, but the one that steals your voice and keeps you silent.”_

― Abby Norman

 ~*~*~*~

He wakes in the darkness feeling a little sluggish and cold, a great and terrible force building behind his eyes. It makes moving an unnecessary chore. He can barely turn his head to one side without his whole world spinning suddenly on its axis.

Peter’s had hangovers before but this is something special.

Intuitively, though, he knows this isn’t a hangover. Hangovers don’t leave you wondering whether or not someone’s jabbed a knife through your chest. He’s gotten into drunken brawls before, of course, but this feels more like someone’s literally chewed him up and spat him back out again. He feels used. He feels…

Violated.

With herculean effort, he rolls over onto his side and sits up. His world spins again.

He needs to puke.

Peter curls an arm across his stomach and leans forward, bracing himself for the inevitable. But it doesn’t come. Instead, he dry-heaves a little, fighting to contain himself before the small amount of energy it takes to gag inadvertently makes his head explode. ‘ _So much for being the descendant of a ‘god’_ , _’_ he muses. He wonders if Ego’s ever felt this shitty or if the man’s just as impervious to physical pain as he is to human emotion. The guy’s got to have pain receptors though. Can’t experience the fullness of ‘life’ without those, after all.

Once he’s regained control of his diaphragm, Peter takes a deep breath and tries to focus. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got here. He remembers very little leading up to this moment, actually, his most recent memory being that of his father crushing his Walkman after impaling him on a self-made tendril of light.

Screw the ‘light’.

…Except now, maybe. He wouldn’t mind a little of that. At least until he gets the hell out of here.

“Where are you, you coward?” Peter mutters miserably. Soft as his voice is, it echoes loudly in the darkness with a peculiar auditory ring that almost sounds surreal. But then, everything about this living planet is surreal, from the freakishly colorful terrain to the egotistical maniac running the show. Peter has no doubt Ego put him down here to teach him a lesson, but he’s had enough of his father’s supposed words of wisdom. He needs to get out of here and find the others, preferably before Ego uses him as a living battery to obliterate the universe again.

Assuming, of course, Ego hasn’t obliterated it already.

 _‘No,’_ he thinks. He can’t go there. He’s not a defeatist. That’s never quite been his style.

Taking a deep breath, Peter braces his hands against the ground in front of him and then pushes himself up onto his feet. He sways a little to one side, head pulsing with every heartbeat, but he doesn’t fall and he doesn’t heave again. A win on both accounts. He can do this.

Then he feels it.

A warm breeze against the back of his neck.

Peter pivots around sharply, trips over his own damn feet, and collapses face first to the ground. He eats dirt and rattles his brain inside his head, but otherwise he’s still alive.

 _He can do this_.

After an indeterminable amount of time spent lying on the ground, suffering in silence, his father’s voice booms to life in the vast space around him. _“In the beginning,”_ the megalomaniac says, _“there was darkness.”_

Irritably, Peter pushes himself back to his feet. He’s both incredibly ticked off and a little afraid, because what if this _is_ a new beginning, the direct aftermath of his father’s Expansion?

Peter shudders.

“Where am I?” he asks.

 _“I thought that would be obvious,”_ Ego replies, softer this time. _“Underground. Away from my core, of course. We won’t be having a repeat of last night’s little stunt, I can assure you.”_

“What stunt?” Peter asks, confused, before launching into the _real_ million-dollar question on his mind: “Where are my friends?”

_“Safe. If you behave, I’ll let you see them.”_

_‘If you behave’_.

Irked as he is to be treated like a child, Peter’s got enough sense about him to realize he needs to tread carefully here. Yesterday, they apparently made an attempt to reach Ego’s core. Probably to destroy it. And failed.

God, he hopes nobody is dead.

Interpreting Peter’s silence for the small and reluctant surrender that it is, Ego gently says, _“I don’t want to discipline you, Peter. Obey me and I will give you all that you desire and more.”_

“Yeah? Well, I want a universe that isn’t inhabited by just two entities.”

Ego sighs. _“That’s not up for debate, I’m afraid. We **will** expand. That is final.”_

‘We _will_ ’—meaning Ego hasn’t succeeded in his plans for the Expansion _just_ yet.

Peter almost sighs in relief.

 _“I didn’t bring you down here to argue,”_ Ego continues. _“I wanted to show you something.”_

“You mean the darkness?” Peter mutters. “Because I can’t see a damn thing.”

_“Which is all a part of the lesson. As I was saying…in the beginning, there was darkness. I had no eyes to see and no ears to hear. The sensation of touch was beyond me. Do you know how **maddening** that is…to know that you exist without understanding how to define yourself?”_

“Sounds awful,” Peter quips.

 _“I’m glad you agree,”_ Ego replies sarcastically. _“Thinking back on the experience, I realized this would make an excellent exercise for you.”_

Concerned now, Peter can feel the sweat prickling on the nape of his neck. He’s in no kind of shape for a test, mental or otherwise.  “What kind of exercise?”

_“It took me a while, but eventually I discovered a way to escape the darkness. Clever as you are, I know it won’t be long before you discover a way out too.”_

“What?”

_“Find your way to the surface, Peter. But tread carefully. Immortal that you might be, hitting the ground after a hundred-foot drop is still going to hurt.”_

“Hold on just a minute,” Peter snaps, “What exactly do you think this is going to teach me besides the fact that you’re the biggest dick in the universe?” He waits a moment for some kind of smart retort or reprimand, but when all he gets is silence his heartrate picks up just a bit. “…Hello?”

His voice echoes into the darkness.

Cursing under his breath, Peter pats down his sides. He’s got nothing on him but the clothes on his back and a handkerchief, whatever good that’ll do him. Ego cleaned him right out before abandoning him to the abyss.

Although, Ego hasn’t _exactly_ abandoned him. He _is_ the planet. Peter knows the man can still sense him. He’s watching Peter even now, waiting for him to make his move.

Peter doesn’t know what that move is supposed to be. He hasn’t got a flashlight and he’s too creeped out by Ego to reconnect with the ‘light’. Or maybe that’s the point. Maybe Ego wants him to wander aimlessly in the darkness until he capitulates.

But Peter’s not ready to swallow his pride, so he takes one tentative step forward after the other. The ground is uneven here and covered in debris. He stubs his toe more than once in the first five minutes of his adventure.

With any luck though, he’ll stumble across something he can use as a walking stick.

Although hopefully before he suffers a hundred-foot drop.

~*~*~*~

Stubborn to a fault.

Ego can’t say he isn’t proud though. Peter is tenacious and creative, as any Celestial should be. It’s necessary for the evolution of one’s mind. A person needs the courage to reach far beyond the comfort of one’s solitary sense of self and the imagination to survive what they find, although Peter’s obstinacy in not using the Light is going to work against him in this situation.

Ego wonders how long he’ll last in absolute darkness before panic starts to set it.

Ego keeps his mind’s eye focused on Peter as he makes his way down to the vault beneath his palace, cognisant of every tentative step his son takes as Peter searches blindly for salvation. He is cognisant too of the person stirring just on the other side of the door, no doubt baffled by the fact that he chose to spare the lives of her and her companions when he was so close snuffing them out completely. He is not a merciful man, after all, at least when it comes to lower lifeforms.

Pushing the twin doors open, Ego smiles.

Each of his son’s former companions lie in their own glass cells, packed in with food, water, and a mattress. The food and water was shipped in from another planet, the same supplies that Mantis used when she was his ally to avoid having her feast off him, but everything else is his creation. There is nothing on this planet they can use against him without his knowledge, although he knows the woman Gamora still pried stones out of the floor and hurtled them at the glass an hour ago in the hopes of escape.

When he enters the room, she rises from her mattress to face him. The others are sill comatose, but she looks no worse for wear, chin jutted up against him, as proud and defiant as his son. Ego can see now why Peter is so attracted to her.

Such a pity.

As he approaches her cell, she steps up to the glass and says, “Where is Peter?”

Ego shrugs. “He needed a little down time.”

“If you’ve hurt him—”

Ego raises his hand for silence.

She takes a deep breath, hatred burning in her eyes.

“I would never hurt him,” Ego finally says. “Not my own flesh and blood. He’s safe. He’s…thinking about what he’s done wrong.”

“Peter hasn’t done anything wrong,” she retorts. “And you _have_ hurt him. More than any being in the universe ever could.”

Ego sighs.

He knows she’s referring to Meredith Quill. There are times when even he regrets his decision to end her, but the Expansion is the very reason for Peter’s being and his son needed to know all that his father’s plan entailed. Ego had simply made the mistake of assuming he’d had a strong enough grip on the boy’s psyche to stomp out his love of all things outside their own existence. But there’s nothing he can do about that now and so he refuses to dwell on the matter any further.

“I’ll make it up to him,” Ego sighs. He’s giving the boy the universe after all. What greater gift could a father bestow upon his son?

“How?” she mutters.

Ego offers her a small smile. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

She blinks at him in surprise, but that fire in her eyes is still there. Then something seem to dawn on her as she says, “Your plan failed, didn’t it?”

Ego’s smile slowly fades.

He _didn’t_ fail, actually. His pods are still scattered throughout the cosmos, waiting for him to supply them with just a little more juice. He’d almost succeeded yesterday—had Peter down on his knees and hooked up with the greatest force in the universe, but then the boy passed out and severed the connection, inadvertently bringing Ego’s master plan to a grinding halt.

Even though he was the one holding the reins and driving the Light out into the vast expanse of space, Ego figures he overloaded Peter with the unexpected energy surge. It was just a matter of a little too much, a little too soon. After all, Peter is still very much attached to his mortal form. He is limited by a preconceived notion of restraint, something Ego hopes to cure him off in the coming days.

Irritably, Ego crosses one hand over the other and gives her a level look. “No. It did not fail.”

“It didn’t succeed either, otherwise you would have no use for us.”

“Too true.” Ego’s gaze flickers over the other cells on either side of woman, eyeing the slumbering captives within. “Peter is overly fond of you.”

“We’re his family.”

Ego chuckles.

What does she know of family? Even if she were to stand before her own kith and kin, her connection to them would be nothing in comparison to the bond he shares with Peter. He could always sense the boy out there in the universe, not as a concrete image at first, but still very much an inviting warmth. It was the first time he’d no longer felt truly ‘alone’, that he understood there existed another of his kind.

“Debatable,” is all that Ego says before he pivots sharply on his heel and marches back toward the double doors. The woman pounds her fist against the glass behind him and hurtles curses at him, but they fall on deaf ears. She is a flea. He is a god.

And _he_ is the only family Peter needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Before you ask: Yes, Yondu is still alive. Also, future chapters will be longer. I just wanted to set the stage with this one.


	2. Meredith Quill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I had no idea so many other people were as gung ho about exploring Peter's relationship with his father as I am. Thank you for the wonderful support! I hope you continue to enjoy the story.

Meredith Quill was the personification of sunshine.

That’s how Peter likes to remember her. He didn’t get to see much of her after she got sick and he knows she didn’t want to be seen that way either. The brain tumor had been aggressive but it was the chemo that sapped the life out of her—she’d become a shell of her former cheery self, too tired even to enjoy her favorite tunes on the radio. She pretty much slept the last few days of her life away, up until the night she’d roused herself to say goodbye to Peter, reaching out for his warmth in a gesture he has no doubt she’d meant to be reassuring…

He will _always_ regret not taking her hand. He doesn’t like to think that the last thing she felt was repulsive, but he’s sure she did. He didn’t recognize her in that hospital bed and he’d stupidly assumed he could keep her alive a little longer by refusing to fulfill her last wish. What a fool he’d been.

He deserved to be abducted by aliens.

But he doesn’t deserve this…this _internment_ in the hollowed heart of the man who killed his mother.

Peter sighs.

He’s not sure if he’s imagining it, but it’s gotten a little cooler down here since he started out. He’s shivering, but not hard enough to cause him concern. He’s used to the cold. _Space_ is cold. He just has to wonder if the lack of warmth is a natural part of the environment or if his father’s cranked up the difficulty level on his indeterminable punishment.

Either way, Peter finds himself zipping up his jacket and crossing his arms tight against his chest as he shuffles along in the darkness. He’s tripped a couple of times already and had a nasty fall down a slippery slope a while back, but he’s still in one piece. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here though. Honestly, it feels like it could’ve been a day. He’s absolutely starving and as thirsty as all hell, but he figures he shouldn’t complain. After all, he’s been in worse scrapes than this. A bad case of the munchies isn’t going to kill him.

Given what Ego’s told him about his heritage, he wonders if there’s really anything that _can_ kill him. His father himself, perhaps. Ego knows how to access Peter’s connection to the ‘light’, so it stands to reason that he probably knows how to sever it too, although Peter supposes that would be counterproductive to his plans. But it does raises an interesting question, namely what _is_ Ego’s plan now? He seemed awfully eager to get the ball rolling with his great Expansion just the other day, so where did all his urgency go?

Lost in thought, Peter doesn’t realize he’s hit water until he literally steps in it. It’s just a quiet little trickle and the resulting splash underfoot is hilariously small, but it immediately reminds him of how parched his throat is. So, he crouches down to touch the cool, wet stone to make sure he isn’t dreaming and almost laughs in relief as the silent stream snakes coyly between his fingertips.

Normally, he wouldn’t straight up drink water from an unknown source on a foreign planet, at least not before filling up a bottle and tossing in a purifying capsule, but since Ego doesn’t seem to have much patience for other lifeforms, Peter’s betting he wouldn’t stand to have a parasite living inside him either. Hence, he figures the water’s probably ‘safe enough’ for consumption.

He cups his right hand and ducks it under the flow as best he can. Then he raises it to his lips to take a sip, and another, and another, until his tongue no longer feels like sandpaper and the uncomfortable rasp at the back of his throat fades away. It tastes surprisingly good. Not at all metallic or earthy like he was expecting, so he drinks his fill before pushing himself back up on his aching feet and continuing his pitiful march onward. He’s got places to be, after all. Namely, the other side of the galaxy.

He steps over the little stream and walks on level ground for a bit, listening to the rushing sound far off to his left. It sounds like a waterfall, but the acoustics are horribly off in this place and he doesn’t know if he should explore it further. Since he’s trapped in the dark, he doesn’t know if he’s been walking in circles, so following the water would at least give him a solid sense of direction…

In theory, it sounds like a good idea, although it hinges entirely on him following it on foot— _not_ by falling into it.

Which is, quite unfortunately, exactly what he does.

And it’s a hell of a long fall because he doesn’t hit the water for a couple of seconds. Fortunately, he doesn’t encounter anything solid on the way down, but he gets water up his nose and down his throat and ends up hacking his lungs out when he manages to lift his head above the surface. And _shit_ is it ever cold. So much so that it stuns him for a moment. He has absolutely no idea what he should do.

Miraculously, he floats, drifting casually with the stream toward the rushing sound of destiny. He doesn’t know where the edge of this mysterious river is and it’s easy to get turned around in the dark, so flailing for something to grab a hold of does him no good whatsoever. He panics then, kicking futilely against the pull of the river, limbs suddenly feeling heavy and loose. He’s either going to drown or bash his head in at the bottom of the fall and he’s never going to get the chance to tell his team how much he really loves them.

Frightened, he tries to focus on treading water, eyes searching vainly in the dark for some sign of salvation. And then, oddly enough, he finally spots it—a rock jutting up out of the water, just close enough that he can reach out and brush it with his numb fingertips. He misses it completely, _of course_ , but he’s so dumbfounded by the fact that he can actually _see_ it that he isn’t too disappointed by his failure, especially when another one crops up right after it.

He flails again and throws himself bodily on top of this one. It’s big enough that he can rest against it with his chest, legs still dangling in the water, which affords him a chance to rest. It still doesn’t solve the problem of him being in the river, but he’ll take his victories where he finds then, thank you very much.

After he’s had a moment to catch his breath, he glances at his trembling hands.

He might be hallucinating, but he’s pretty sure he’s glowing.

As his muddled brain tries to make sense of this unusual turn of events, he realizes he can hear something approaching him, heralded by the sound of splashing water. And sure enough, just in the periphery of his vision, he can see Ego strolling casually toward him on the surface of the river, grinning at him like the cat that’s finally got the canary.

Peter’s stomach does a somersault.

He hopes to god this whole thing is just one long fever dream…

But of course it isn’t, and as soon as Ego reaches him, his father smiles beatifically at him and says, “I’ll be honest, I didn’t think you were going to walk right off the edge.”

Peter has no words for the other man, so he just focuses all his energy on glowering.

The look is no doubt ruined by his chattering teeth.

“But I still have to applaud you,” his father chuckles as he crouches down beside him. “I knew once you had a taste for it, you’d take to the Light like a duck to water. I only wonder why you didn’t reach out for it sooner. Did you enjoy wandering in the darkness for days?”

He’s been trapped down here for _days_? Good lord…but then, who knows how many hours are in one of Ego’s ‘days’?

His father no doubt spins on his axis at his own goddamn pace. 

Mustering his strength, Peter spits out a spiteful “ _No_ ” before trying to readjust his grip on the rock. The current almost sucks him in again.

He can barely feel his legs now.

Ego tuts under his breath, reaching out suddenly to brush Peter’s wet bangs away from his face. Peter flinches away from him but doesn’t get too far, lacking the necessary strength to do much of anything as his father grabs one of his arms and hooks it over his shoulders before slipping his other arm around Peter’s waist. Effortlessly, he lifts Peter out of the water.

Peter’s toes still drag against the surface, but his father keeps him airborne for the most part as he walks them toward the shore, their path illuminated solely by Peter’s feeble glow. Ego deposits him there gently and then gives a hearty laugh, like some benevolent being as Peter trembles pitifully at his feet.

“Take a deep breath,” Ego says, brushing the water off his cape. “And then tell me how you feel.”

 _‘Like absolute shit,’_ Peter thinks to himself. Lying curled up on his side, arms and knees tucked in close against his torso, he tries to ignore the other man as he contemplates the pros and cons of ditching his coat. It’s completely water logged now and weighing him down, but he doesn’t have anything dry to change into and he certainly has nothing with which to make a fire.

There’s a very good chance he’ll never be warm again…

But he _feels_ warm, although in a somewhat unnatural way, probably because he’s suffering from hypothermia. Or maybe not, because his limbs feel like pins and needles and his muscles ache like they’re on fire, every nerve blazing to life with a vengeance. Quite frankly, it feels more as though his body is coming back to its senses than hypothermia.

“ _Ow_ ,” he grunts.

Ego smiles.

Then he reaches into the folds of his cape to produce what looks like some kind of fruit, which he tosses onto the ground beside his son. “I thought you might like an apple.”

Peter grabs it tentatively and gives the sad semblance of a peace offering a careful once over. “This is a peach.”

Ego shrugs, as though no one can fault him for making such a simple mistake. “Are you hungry or not?”

Begrudgingly, Peter sinks his teeth into it.

It tastes like an apple.

Which is not a bad thing, so he takes another bite with more enthusiasm than he normally would because he’s isn’t just ‘hungry’—he’s _starving_ , like he could probably eat his weight in food and still have room for more. It honestly makes him wonder how he lasted so many days without any kind of nourishment. It could very well be a sign that he’s no longer half as mortal as he once thought he was…

There’s a silver of truth in that assumption and it gives him pause. Makes him feel a little sick too.

He doesn’t _want_ to be anything less than mortal.

Ego tilts his head to one side, staring down at Peter with an open kind of curiosity that’s honestly a little frightening on the face of a self-made god. “I’ve only had Terran fruit once before. How is it?”

Peter swallows the morsel in his mouth. “As shitty as your parenting skills.”

Finally, the smug look on Ego’s face wavers. “Was that really necessary?”

Peter lets the half-eaten ‘apple’ roll to the ground.

Ego sighs.

Peter doesn’t care what the man thinks. Even less so when the light suddenly begins to fade. In fact, it’s kind of a relief, because then he can ignore the way Ego’s cold eyes bore into him before they disappear together into the darkness.

“Stubborn,” Ego mutters quietly at his small display of defiance.

Peter doesn’t say anything. Just lies there and listens, waiting for…something.

When nothing happens, he hugs his arms against his chest and shudders as the warmth recedes.

He wonders how many days of this he can survive.

~*~*~*~

Meredith Quill was a woman unlike any other.

Ego spent a month falling for her on his first trip to Earth. She had a soft voice and warm smile and a quirky kind of attitude that was unbelievably endearing. She loved to lie on the cool grass in the early evening, munching on French fries or enjoying a cold soda as she waited for the day to bleed into night. She would tuck herself in tight against him on those lovely evenings and listen to his tales of old as the stars flickered to life above them, blanketing them with a solemn kind of serenity Ego had failed to find in any other corner of the universe. She was a sweet girl, but blunt in her opinion. Believed just about everything that he said. Loved music an awful lot…

Loved him an awful lot too.

Whenever he decided to colonize a new planet, he would usually shop around for a sturdy girl who’d let him get down to business quickly. Mer was a strong woman, no doubt about it, but she wasn’t ‘quick’. She lured him in but kept him at a healthy distance. Said that she knew he had to leave soon, but if he was back in a year, she would know for certain that he was ‘the one’. He could have her then if he wanted. She promised she wouldn’t have any other

So, he left Earth feeling delirious and angry and more than a little confused. It wasn’t often that he was given the runaround. He could make himself the most appealing man on any planet and yet his charm and wit hadn’t worked on her. For a while he feared he was losing his touch, so he visited another planet on his way home and planted a seed there with practiced ease. And then he promised himself that the next time he came to Earth, he would land as far away as possible from St. Charles, Missouri and the maddening girl with the soft voice and the warm smile who lived there.

He didn’t last a year.

He returned to Earth six months too soon, pacing the pavement outside her little apartment as he tried to make sense of his newfound addiction. He didn’t sleep unless he wanted to, but whenever he closed his eyes he saw her face. In truth, she had planted the first seed between them, it being one of affection, its roots like a vice around his poor imitation of a human heart.

And he told her as much when she burst out the door, chewing bubble gum and hauling a sport’s bag over one shoulder. He finally confessed how much he adored her, feeling open and vulnerable in a way he hadn’t since the beginning of his time.

Seemingly unfazed, she invited him to go bowling with her; stupefied, he did just that.

And in the dead of night, under a blanket of stars, they finally made love.

It was both the simplest and most wonderful experience he’d ever had with another living being. He’d been dreaming of the moment since he first met her, spending more time fantasizing about the child they would make together than he had for any of his other offspring. Meredith had expressed her desire to have a son once, so he decided early on that it would be a boy and that this boy would have his mother’s eyes. He would be quirky like her too, or so Ego hoped, and they would name him Peter after Meredith’s grandfather.

Of all the other women he’d used in his time, Meredith Quill would have the greatest influence on his progeny and Ego would be glad of it.

He visited her once after the first five months of her pregnancy and stayed for a few weeks, just for the satisfaction of watching her grow. She knew her child was going to be a little unusual, but she welcomed the challenge of raising him with relish. She had an inkling Peter would be amazing. Ego thought so too.

But he shouldn’t have stayed as long as he did. He knew what was coming. He wanted _so desperately_ for Peter to be ‘the one’, for the child of Meredith Quill to be his eternal companion. He needed a sliver of her to extend into the next cycle of life. In this way, he could make her immortal too.

With a heavy heart, he told her he had to leave. He would be back for Peter’s birth. He promised.

He almost didn’t keep that promise.

He returned to Earth hours after her labor. He crept into her hospital room around two in the morning to find her nursing their boy. Despite the fact she looked like she’d been through hell and back again, she was happy. Peter was healthy. He weighed a little less than most babies but was otherwise normal.

He certainly looked normal, but Ego felt as though there was something… _more_ to Peter. He’d never felt this way about any of his other offspring, but then this was his favorite child. Obviously, he was biased to think more highly of Peter than any of the others that had come before him.

Ego held his son for a while. He was remarkably small. And weak. Humans were so peculiar in that respect. The young needed considerable help for the first few years of life—the kind of help Ego couldn’t afford to give with his kind of schedule. Now that his work here was done, he had places to be and children to test. Every moment he spent on Earth was time wasted. 

Every moment he spent obsessing over Meredith was time wasted too, unfortunately.

He handed his son back to the girl and sat down on the edge of the bed. She smiled at him as sweetly as she always did, when the stars were in her eyes and his fingers were threaded through her hair. He wanted to kiss her so badly. And he did.

Once on the lips.

And once on the forehead.

She laughed at the gesture, which woke Peter. The baby wailed for a bit, but Meredith settled him down again. She would make a fine mother, Ego thought. Peter would have a great start.

Collecting himself, Ego kissed one of Peter’s tiny fists and rose from the bed. He promised Meredith that he would return someday. He wasn’t sure when that would be, but he wanted to show Peter his world, the one Peter would hopefully make his home someday.

She beamed at him and said farewell, the picture of purity and innocent youth.

He never saw her again.

With time, he could push the most vivid memories of her from his mind. He still hummed her favorite tunes though. Those would always haunt him.

Like now, as he thought of Peter, wandering aimlessly in the belly of the proverbial beast.

He doesn’t understand the boy, but he’s willing to try. Peter’s not so different from his father as he would like to think and Ego was going to prove that to him. Dealing with Peter was just going to require a little more patience than what he was accustomed to exercising on his progeny, solely because of his age.

Of course, he wouldn’t _be_ in this predicament if Peter had been delivered to him all those years ago. Ego doesn’t understand why Yondu Udonta backed out of their deal, but the man’s meddling might very well have pushed the Expansion back by centuries, depending on the whims of his wayward son. Part of Ego was confident it wouldn’t take quite that long, but it vexed him to know that such a lowly creature was the cause for this unnatural delay.

Pacing in the grand hall of his palace, he let his thoughts drift to the vault several hundred feet below. For the last couple of days, his captives had been conversing freely among themselves, plotting an escape that would never come to fruition. They were only just beginning to realize that there _was_ no escape, that Ego was the last stop on their long and arduous journey across the universe. There was nothing they could do to change that.

Usually, he tries to forget they’re down there, but this time he lets his consciousness drift freely across the vault before narrowing his focus to the blue-skinned scoundrel. The ground parts as Ego summons him up—and suddenly Udonta appears, spitting dirt and struggling with the vines wrapped around his torso, pinning him down on his knees.

Where he belongs.

“I’ve always wanted to know,” Ego drawls. “Why did you keep my son?”

Udonta quirks an eyebrow at him, giving Ego an awkward kind of half-shrug as he continues to struggle with the vines. “Kind’a cute,” he gasps.

Of course he was. Ego put a considerable amount of time and effort into crafting his half of Meredith’s child, and Peter was undeniably beautiful because of it.

But that isn’t why Udonta kept him.

Ego folds his hands together behind his back as the vines around Udonta’s throat constrict. He chokes; Ego smiles. “Let’s try that again—why did you deliver the first two I hired you to collect but not the third?”

Udonta shrugs again—an incredible feat, if Ego were ever willing to admit to that—and says, “You left a _whole_ lotta dead ladies behind, jackass. Two’s weird. Three’s something awful.”

That gives Ego pause. He killed the mothers of all his children to eliminate the possibility of someone preventing him from collecting them. He didn’t realize Udonta was keeping track of that. None of the other traders he’d hired really gave a damn about who they were collecting or why, so Ego never had any reason to assume a disgraced Ravager would be any different.

“Are you telling me you have a heart?” Ego mutters. “Because your reputation says otherwise. Why didn’t you just leave him behind on Earth?”

“To piss you off.”

Ego tightens the vines a little more, enough so that the veins bulge on Udonta’s forehead and his skin takes on a sickly yellow pallor.

He would love nothing more than to snuff out the Centaurian’s life. It would be _so_ easy. In fact, if Ego squeezed any harder, he’s sure Udonta’s head would pop right off.

As the other man’s eyes roll back in his skull and his body finally goes lax, Ego loosens his grip. Udonta’s head falls forward like a rag doll’s for a moment before he raises it again, gasping for air as his skin tone deepens into a healthy azure blue.

As much as Ego wants to kill him, he can’t. Not yet. Each of Peter’s companions is another link in his son’s chain, and killing even one of them prematurely might turn Peter away from him once and for all.

Ego needs to play his son’s game just as much as Peter’s been forced to play his. With enough time, Ego’s sure they’ll find a way to gain the upper hand.

But knowing that Peter cares more for his mortal companions than his own flesh and blood is not an easy truth to swallow. Even…this _thing_ that abducted Peter and kept him for his own selfish needs somehow stands on a higher pedestal in Peter’s mind than his own father. Ego can hardly stomach the thought of being held in such low regard. It’s practically _blasphemy_.

Before he even realizes what he’s doing, Ego tightens his hand into a fist and decks Udonta hard across the face. Then again. It feels cathartic, especially when it takes a while for Udonta to come back to his senses, spitting blood between his crooked teeth. How pathetic.

 _Hardly_ worth Peter’s love or adoration.

“Well, congratulations,” Ego mutters as he flexes his hand, relishing the ache in his joints before he sets his knuckles right again. He hasn’t punched anyone for almost a hundred years. “You’ve won yourself the ire of a god. Not many people can make that claim.”

Udonta spits again and winces. Then he says, “Where is he?”

“Peter?” Ego asks, momentarily confused by the non-sequitur. “He’s on something of a pilgrimage.”

“A what?”

Ego sighs. “He’s on a journey of self-actualization. He’s finding his way into the Light.”

And Peter is succeeding at it too. His son had reached out for his father in his time of need and Ego knows it won’t be long before he does it again. He can feel his son’s desperation. Cold and delirious, he’ll eventually come to the conclusion that his father is the only one who can ease his suffering.

 _Not_ his friends.

“When can we see him?” Udonta asks.

“When Peter is ready to see you,” Ego replies tersely. In a couple of days, he knows Peter will reach his breaking point. _Then_ Ego will bring him back above ground.

Sighing again, Ego says, “I think I’ve had my fill of you, Udonta. You _will_ pay for your interference, but not today.” He waves his hand and the stones shift below them again, the palace trembling as he reforms the very earth to his will. “And tell that strange monkey friend of yours to stop digging. He’s never going to reach the surface in his lifetime.”

Udonta opens his mouth to say something, but the ground swallows him up  before he can get a word out, his cry of alarm cut off by the tiles that resettle effortlessly on the floor of Ego’s opulent hall.

Weary in a way he’s not accustomed to, Ego walks out toward the balcony to watch the sun set on the horizon. He stands there for what feels like a small eternity as the stars slowly flicker to life above him, cold and aloof and so very far away…

After a moment of contemplation, he reaches into his pocket for his communicator.

Given Peter’s remarkable progress so far, he thinks its about time he put the second stage of his son’s transformation in motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I am absolutely torn between believing Ego's story about how much he adored Meredith (although obviously not enough to let her live) and wondering whether everything he told Peter was a lie. I'm sure Meredith shared some of her fondest memories of Ego with Peter, so I'm inclined to believe the fact that Ego visited her more than once, enough so that she didn't feel as though he abandoned her. Whether or not he was motivated entirely by love when he came to see her will forever remain a mystery, I suppose...
> 
> PS: I'll be exploring the perspective of other characters soon, especially Yondu. Despite what Ego thinks, everyone is important in their own way.
> 
> PPS: I don't have a beta, so I apologize for any awkward mistakes. Don't feel bad about pointing them out to me if you see something that annoys you.


	3. Capitulation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Welcome to chapter three of the insanity...

By Nebula’s estimate, they’ve been trapped here a little over fifteen days.

She sits on the mattress in her cell with her back pressed up against the wall and her legs crossed, only half-listening as the fox argues with Captain Udonta’s man over who could build a better engine. She’s tempted to tell them to shut the hell up, but they haven’t spoken much in the last few days and she can tell by their haggard remarks that their argument is already winding down. Silence will descend upon them again soon enough—a small blessing, if a somewhat dismal one at that.

In the beginning, her fellow captives would banter lightly as they openly entertained their plans for escape, but after the empath informed them that Ego could hear every word they said, their morale took a considerable nosedive. They only bicker now or say nothing at all, lounging around with a kind of listlessness that reminds Nebular eerily of her life as a child under Thanos’ rule, waiting anxiously with her sisters for the next battle between them to begin. The only exception to this rule is Gamora, who’s spent the majority of her time meditating, never once giving in to her companions’ fits of anger or frustration.

Nebula tries not to think too highly of her sister, but Gamora’s calm composure gives her an odd sense of ease.

But only because it means she’s planning something.

Within Nebula’s left arm is a small drill, one she could easily utilize to cut through the glass and one which Gamora knows exists, but the fact that she hasn’t mentioned it out loud yet implies that it has a place in her own master plan for escape. It’s maddening not being able to outright ask her what said master plan _is_ , but Nebula can already tell what elements it’s currently lacking. Getting _out_ of a cell isn’t so hard, but getting up to the surface will be a feat in and of itself, and once one of them makes it up there, they still have to figure out a way of getting off the planet. The Centaurian’s friend—‘Kraglin’, she believes—claimed that their ship had been destroyed, literally swallowed whole by the planet just moments after he was pulled from the wreckage by a tendril of light. This means they _also_ have to send a signal for outside help, adding yet another layer of difficulty to the whole operation.

But Nebula can tell Gamora has something solid in mind to get the proverbial ball rolling. It’s in the way Gamora locks eyes with her as she takes a leisurely sip of water from one of the last few bottles in her cell, as though _willing_ Nebula to read her thoughts.

Then Gamora’s gaze flickers a little off to the left, glancing past Nebula at the something just beyond her.

There _is_ nothing else behind Nebula. Well…except the empath. Mantis doesn’t talk much, which Nebula finds odd for her kind, choosing instead to spend her time curled up in a little ball on her mattress.

Part of her pitiful display irritates Nebula—her punishment at Ego’s hand is _nothing_ in comparison to the many ways in which Thanos used to make Nebula suffer. All the same, part of the strange woman’s behavior is…understandable _,_ if only because Nebula knows that the cruelest face of abuse is often psychological. From the little of what Mantis has told her since their imprisonment together, she lived her entire life alone on this planet with a man who couldn’t be half-assed to teach her anything beyond what she needed to know to serve him. Which, unfortunately did not include how to cope with difficult situations such as this. If anything, this experience probably has her feeling nostalgic for the good old days when she was treated like nothing more than a dog…

…

Suddenly, Nebula connects the dots.

Or she assumes she has. There’s a certain amount of risk associated with playing with a person’s thoughts and emotions, but Nebula can see part of her sister’s plan now with crystal clarity. And so, taking the initiative she knows Gamora’s been waiting for, Nebula glances over her shoulder at the sulking woman and asks, “If you could kill the man who put you here, would you make it fast or slow?”

Mantis sniffles—was she crying again?

Nebula frowns and turns a little farther in her seat. Sure enough, Mantis’ wide eyes are puffy and red.

“Who do you mean?” the empath asks.

“Ego,” Nebula snaps irritably. Who _else_ would she be talking about? “Would you kill him immediately or would you make him suffer?”

“Oh no!” Mantis gasps, rubbing at her runny nose with the back of her hand. She curls her knees a little closer to her chest and averts her gaze shamefully. “I could never kill him. He raised me. He—”

“—sentenced you to an eternity of _this_.” Nebula gestures to the wide, open room, empty save for their little glass cells and the glowing white orbs that dot the ceiling at odd intervals. “If I had Thanos at my mercy, he would suffer every torment known in the universe. There is _nothing_ I wouldn’t do to him…”

“I-I’m sorry,” Mantis replies, voice wobbling. “My master’s done so much for me. I…I-I couldn’t…”

Nebula pauses for a moment to glance at Gamora, searching for some hint that she’s misread the situation. Thankfully, Gamora doesn’t bat so much as an eyelash. She just takes another long sip of water and continues to watch Nebula work in silence.

Satisfied, Nebula cranes her head back around toward the empath and says, “You’re a _disgrace_. You would probably grovel for his forgiveness if he gave you the chance.”

Mantis is silent for a moment. Then she bursts out into great, heaving sobs, burying her face in the crook of her arm as she lets it all out.

Nebula rolls her eyes—and is then startled by the sound of someone banging against the wall of their cell.

She whips her head around to see the greyish humanoid known as ‘Drax’ staring at her with an intensity that is oddly amusing.

“You have no right to judge her,” he barks, fist still raised against the glass. “She is weak and naïve.”

“I don’t disagree,” she replies.

“Good,” he says—before turning away, obviously interpreting her response as a form of capitulation.

Nebula blinks in confusion as he lies back down on his mattress and closes his eyes. She feels as though she needs to say something, but she doesn’t know what.

Gamora smirks in amusement.

“I hate you all,” Nebula mutters, but for once she doesn’t mean that wholeheartedly. As little as she’s said today, she feels as though they’ve made significant progress in their plans for escape.

Bored now, Nebula stretches out on her own mattress. Mantis is still crying, but softer this time, no doubt surprised that her friend was still willing to come to her defence. It’s easy enough to drown her out as Nebula lets her mind drift to the sensation of the world turning—one of the few perks of being a cyborg, she supposes. She can fell the push and pull of the subtler forces of the universe.

Intuitively, she realizes that in just ten more hours Ego will have completed yet another revolution. Why he’s bothered to keep them alive this long is beyond her, but she knows their continued well-being depends entirely on Peter Quill, the Terran delinquent who somehow bested Ronan.

She just hopes he’s in a better condition to help them than they are to help him…

~*~*~*~

He’s in hell.

Peter has no other explanation for his current predicament. As soon as his father dragged him out of the water, his condition went from bad to worse. He feels feverish and weak, so much so that he can barely walk. He’s collapsed a couple of times already, either from exhaustion or the wicked sense of vertigo that set in almost as suddenly as the darkness descended. But every time he allows himself to stop, mustering the strength to crawl back to his feet becomes more of a challenge, and so he tries to push himself continuously onward, uncertain in his course but determined not to falter.

It doesn’t help that his head feels as though someone’s taken a jackhammer to it, the blood pounding in his ears now at a thundering rate. He’s dizzy and confused and he feels like he’s about to have a heart attack. He’d kill for a drink. Hell—he’s pretty sure what he’s suffering is severe dehydration, but it’s not as though he can get an expert’s opinion on that. It’s just him down here. Him and good old ‘ _dad_ ’, although he doesn’t expect Ego to understand the importance of keeping one’s inner organs properly hydrated.

Inevitably, it gets to a point where he _thinks_ he’s walking but he’s really just fantasizing about moving from his current position splayed out on the ground. He figures he fell at some point and knocked himself out, otherwise he’d have a better memory of the unfortunate transition from upright to face-down. How long he’s been lying there is anybody’s guess though. Time has no meaning in the dark.

Sensory deprivation truly _is_ maddening.

He has a horrible thought suddenly—that of his companions similarly wandering around in the darkness somewhere on the far side of the planet, just as hungry and thirsty as he is, edging their way carefully around the unforgiveable terrain…

“ _No_ …” Peter moans. Maybe he was supposed to seek them out down here? Maybe that was the real test: if he finds them, he gets to keep them alive and well.

If that’s the case, then he needs to get back up.

And he tries— _god_ does he ever try, but he’s kissing the dirt again almost as soon as he lifts his head. Every joint locks in protest of further movement. He wants to get up again…but he _can’t_.

Peter sobs into his arm. Everything hurts. His friends are going to die.

He was a fool for thinking he could ever be anyone’s hero.

“ _It’s alright, Peter._ ”

Peter cracks his eyes open. Something that vaguely resembles a human hand glows faintly in front of his face, holding out a cup to him in offering. His imaginary friend slowly presses it against his lips, and then he tastes it—

 _Water_.

He grabs salvation’s hand weakly to steady the cup. It feels so real.

“ _Just relax, Peter_ ,” his visitor whispers. “ _You’re not going to die_.”

“I am,” he croaks after a long, deep pull. He knows he should pace himself, because water intoxication is a very real and _very_ fatal thing, but he doesn’t see why he should bother. He’s failed his friends. Whatever happens to him now, he probably deserves it.

“ _No, you’re not_ ,” she says, and it’s then that he realizes his mother is here, pressing the cup back against his lips as she combs her fingers through his tangled hair.

He sips a little more and chokes. She pulls her hand back to let him breathe. “I can’t find them,” he rasps.

“ _Relax_ ,” she coos to him. “ _Let me help you._ ”

“I can’t find them,” he echoes, delirious. He figures he must’ve passed out again, otherwise he wouldn’t have dreamt up his long dead mother.

Real or not, he can feel her rolling him over onto his back, pillowing his head in her lap as she offers him the cup again. It’s still full of water. Practically overflowing.

It tastes _divine_.

“ _I can help you_ ,” his mother reiterates. “ _You’ve been alone for so long and I’m proud of how far you’ve made it, Peter, but you can’t go on like this. Something needs to change._ ”

He’s both pacified by her words and mildly confused by them. He doesn’t know what needs to change—or if he’s the one capable of making said change. He’s utterly powerless down here.

His destiny lies entirely in Ego’s hands.

Thinking of Ego sets his already frayed nerves on edge. Looking up at this beautiful woman, the one who brought him painstakingly into the world before being cruelly torn from it herself, only serves to remind him of how abysmally Ego treated her.

He swallows until he feels sick, spilling some of the water as he gently pushes the cup away. “Ego killed you,” Peter breathes.

“ _He did_ ,” she says softly, “ _but my time was well spent. I don’t have any regrets, Peter._ ”

“You’re dead.”

“ _But I’m in a better place._ ”

A chilling thought occurs to him then: “I can’t follow you.”

She falls silent, obviously mulling over his new dilemma: either he’s still mortal and he’s got one foot out the door already, or he’s _not_ mortal and he’s never going to see her again.

Thoughtfully, she continues to stroke her fingers through his hair. Finally, she says, “ _No matter where you are, I will always be with you._ ”

‘ _But it’s not the same_ ,’ he thinks miserably. Ego didn’t just steal her away from Peter prematurely.

He severed their connection _permanently_.

Which makes this while experience a little more confusing.

He touches her hand again, dragging his fingertips over her knuckles. Her skin is just as soft as he remembers, but unnaturally cold to the touch. She’s pretty much a ghost in tangible form…

His brain cells must be dying en masse right now. There’s no other way he can explain the surrealism of this moment.

But he doesn’t need an explanation, really.

He just wants her company.

“ _Tell me what you need,_ ” his mother says after he’s had a chance to clam down.

He doesn’t know what he _needs_ , but he knows he’s still got at least one last goal on his bucket list: “Help me find my friends.”

She leans down to kiss him on the forehead. “ _Promise me something and I’ll take you to them_.”

“What?” he breathes, feeling a little faint.

He would do anything for her.

Anything at all.

The corners of her lips quirk into a familiar smile. “ _You shouldn’t be fighting_ ,” she whispers before kissing him again. “ _Try to be reasonable, Peter. Be patient. Be kind...The only people you’re hurting right now are you and your friends._ ”

 _God_ …isn’t that just the truth.

He nods a little, chest swelling with emotion. He has to save his team, no matter the cost.

Even if it means giving Ego just a smidgen of what he wants.

His eyes are burning now with what feels like unshed tears; his mother looks a little fuzzy around the edges. So, he reaches out for one of her hands and gives it a little squeeze. She feels a little warmer now. She also smells like the lily-of-the-lake perfume Meredith’s aunt used to give her every birthday.

“I miss you,” he chokes out.

“ _I know_ ,” she replies.

He closes his eyes and tries to relax.

With a great deal of effort, he finally says:

“Help me.”

~*~*~*~

“What is it?”

Dr. Raggor sighs and passes her the vial. Inside is a blueish kind of pulsing sponge, glowing dimly in the dark corridor outside the professor’s laboratory. Rael has seen the bulk of it already just outside, a bubbling mess that only started to collapse in on itself a couple of days ago.

They were still digging out the bodies.

“I don’t know,” Dr. Raggor quietly admits. “We thought it was some kind of yeast or fungi, but sequencing its genome has turned up absolutely nothing.”

The Nova Prime squints at him. “What do you mean by ‘nothing’?”

“It’s unlike anything else in the universe, ma’am. I couldn’t even speculate on its closest relative. That’s just how unique it is.”

“But we’ve now had reports of it growing on over a _thousand_ planets. How could it be so well-traveled and yet so…genetically isolated?”

Dr. Raggor shifts his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “I don’t know.”

Rael sighs. Given how far this unusual plant has spread, she’s tempted to believe it was initially seeded throughout the galaxy millennia ago, but for something to remain dormant for so long before springing to life almost instantaneously across the universe smacks more of a biological attack than anything else really.

But what could’ve infiltrated almost every civilized planet undetected?

And _when_ , exactly, did its grand invasion begin?

Mind reeling, she hands the vial back to him. “I want you to put together a team,” she says. “You and your group are going to pore over the data from the colonized planets we know have so far been unaffected and tell me whether or not you think their environments are unhospitable to this… _thing_.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replies, brows furrowed in confusion. “But what if we determine that this aberration can grow anywhere?”

The already thin line of Rael’s lips tightens even further.

She’s not ready to say it out loud, but she’s had her suspicions since the problem was first drawn to her attention, primarily being that this catastrophe was simply a premature ‘attack’.

She just doesn’t know what they’re going to do when the battle continues.

~*~*~*~

He had surgery once when he was nineteen.

A couple of the guys in Yondu’s crew got into a barfight that ended in a battle of epic proportions. Peter hadn’t exactly been hell bent on helping anyone, but sitting in a room full of angry men flailing about without a care in the world was a recipe for the kind of disaster a kid with Peter’s gangly physique couldn’t hope to avoid. What’s worse was that he was still a little wet behind the ears when it came to duking it out in closed quarters and that was why he took a broken bottle to the gut in the first five minutes of action. The experience was unbelievably painful. In fact, he’s pretty sure he passed out from the agony of his injury rather than the blood loss, only returning to his senses after the crew carted him and the other injured men back to the ship.

Yondu paid some scrubby little doctor to come on board and stitch them all up, but Peter remembers the dismal look on the physician’s face when he finally got to him. Peter got pretty torn up inside. So the doctor gave him a golden shot of god-only-knows-what and then told him to relax, but Peter had a feeling that this was the end of the line for him.

He was therefore pleasantly surprised when he didn’t die.

Whatever the doc gave him really was golden—the moment Peter woke from his drug-induced coma, he felt about as high as a kite, blissfully numb all over and revving to go. He also felt too heavy to _really_ go anywhere, which is the only reason he didn’t try to leave his little cot, lying there in a tripped-up haze for that first few days until the goods wore off and the fire in his gut roared back to life. The next week and a half was spent in utter agony, but he pulled through, much to the amazement of everyone. In hindsight, the only reason he survived was probably because of his ‘unorthodox genealogy’, but it was a miserable experience nonetheless, the kind he had no intention of ever repeating.

Peter wakes now feeling pretty much the same way he did back then, pleasantly warm and fuzzy, and about a half a tonne heavier than he was yesterday. His eyelids alone feel as though they weigh a hundred kilos each, but he still tries his best to pry them open, squinting at the light that streams into his room through the blue-tinted glass balcony doors at the foot of his bed.

He’s back in Ego’s palace.

It takes a moment for the panic to set in. He tries to roll over then, but he can barely turn his head. He’s been tranquilized with something potent.

He thinks.

“You need to rest.”

Peter blinks in surprise.

Sitting just off to the left of the balcony doors, part of his head silhouetted by the window behind him, Ego adjusts his position in his seat and sighs. “You’re going to be out of commission for a while. I don’t know how long…You let yourself get pretty bad down there.”

‘ _Pretty bad_ ’ is an understatement. And he didn’t ‘ _let_ ’ himself get that bad.

Ego did.

He has some choice worth for his father right now, but something tickles at the back of his brain a moment before he lets his verbal barbs fly. It’s as though—

_You shouldn’t be fighting_

—he’s forgetting something incredibly important.

Peter slumps into the mountain of pillows he’s been propped up against. He feels clean. And dry. His wet clothes have been replaced with some kind of white cotton scrubs and his mouth also no longer feels like the Sahara Desert, which is perhaps the greatest improvement from his previous condition by far…

He doesn’t know how he got from point A to point B, but he _does_ know he’d gotten pretty delirious while he was underground. He fell an awful lot too. And got violently ill.

He’s not sure how he made it out of the darkness.

Wasn’t he supposed to be looking for something?

Oh, yeah—

“Where are they?” he croaks, the back of his throat phlegmy from disuse. He tries to swallow some of it and grimaces at the disgusting sensation of it sliding down.

“Right where I left them,” is Ego’s enigmatic response. “Safe and sound, the same as they were two weeks ago.”

…Two weeks?

…

He languished in the darkness without proper sustenance for _two weeks_?!

The alarm must show on his face because it rouses Ego from his seat. But he doesn’t look concerned. In fact, he looks oddly satisfied. “Marvelous, isn’t it? You’re more resilient than you probably ever imagined.”

It was a little marvelous—but mostly just fricking _weird_.

Although, no weirder than holding and wielding an infinity stone, he supposes…

Before he can dwell too long on the obvious decline in his mortality, Peter asks, “How did I get out of there?”

“You didn’t,” Ego replies. “You collapsed and finally asked me to help you.”

“I _what_?” Peter blinks in surprise.

He _really_ thought he was tougher than that.

“Don’t be ashamed,” his father continues, taking a seat on the edge of his bed. “That was the whole point of the lesson, after all—for you to learn that you can reach out to me, because what I _really_ want, Peter, is for us to connect.”

“I was vulnerable,” Peter seethes. “I thought I was going to _die_.”

“No, you didn’t,” his father chuckles, as though catching his son in the middle of a terrible lie. “You thought you were going to find a way out of there on your own because you’re a so-called _‘Guardian of the Galaxy_ ’, but I need you to understand that I’m not some nebulous villain looking to cut you down. I want you to become powerful, Peter—I want you to realize your full potential as a Celestial, but you’re not going to do that roaming the stars like some Terran cowboy. You need to be here. With me.”

Ego obviously thought he was doing Peter a favor, but he wasn’t fooling anyone but himself. If he _really_ thought—

_Try to be reasonable_

—he could shove his whole Expansion scheme back down Peter’s throat and expect him to swallow, he had another thing coming.

However…this _could_ go both ways.

“You want to have a relationship with me?” Peter asks, trying to keep a lid on his temper.

“Of course,” Ego says, reaching across the soft cotton quilt to rest his hand over Peter’s.

He feels surprisingly cold.

It takes every ounce of self-control for Peter not to yank his hand away, but there’s a half-assed plan brewing inside his head and if he plays his cards right he figures it just might work. So, he lets his father have this small victory and says, “If you want me to see the universe through your eyes, then I need you to try to see it through mine. I want you to give me the opportunity to convince you that you _don’t_ need to complete the Expansion in order to fulfill your purpose.”

Ego arches an eyebrow at him.

Peter was expecting more of a reaction out of him, but obviously Ego doesn’t think what he’s asking for is even remotely possible—which is exactly the vibe Peter gets from him when he smiles and says, “You can certainly try.”

Ego probably thinks he’s broken Peter down enough that he can fudge his way through pretending to give a damn about the other people in the universe. But Peter doesn’t actually care whether or not Ego intends to listen to what he has to say—just as long as Ego doesn’t string him up like a Christmas ornament or banish him underground again, Peter knows he can use this opportunity to figure a way to get the hell off this planet.

“Is that a ‘yes’?” Peter asks. “Or is that a ‘no’?”

“That’s a ‘yes’,” Ego finally clarifies. “If you cooperate with me, I will do everything in my power to satisfy you, Peter.”

“Then…does that mean you’ll let me see them?”

“Tomorrow,” Ego sighs, patting Peter’s hand gently before rising from the bed. “Get some sleep. Eat, drink—” he waves vaguely at the cup of water and basket of strange multi-coloured fruit on the bedside table. “I’ll let you see your friends first thing in the morning. All I ask is that you remain in your quarters tonight.”

Peter nods, but his assent hardly matters. Ego would know the moment he set foot outside.

Nonetheless, Ego is pleased with Peter’s mellowed attitude, chin raised with an obvious air of satisfaction as he heads for the door. “Good night, Peter.”

Thankfully, Ego isn’t audacious enough to expect Peter to return the sentiment, disappearing swiftly into the hallway before the bedroom door swings shut behind him. Peter watches him go out of the corner of his eye, mind racing as he tries to think back on his little misadventure underground.

He’s missing a vital piece of information.

He just _knows_ it.

Unfortunately, his brain doesn’t want to cooperate. It never does, really, but he feels particularly stupid right now. He shouldn’t be suffering memory loss at such a young age, Celestial or not.

Sighing, he stares at the blue-tinted balcony doors and the small glowing sphere of the sun as it sets on the horizon just beyond them. He never thought he was going to see the sun again…He supposes he should be grateful Ego didn’t decide to leave him down there for another hundred years.

At least aboveground he and the others stand a chance of escape.

Assuming, of course, Ego actually returns his friends...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Should I be including any other warnings in my tags? Let me know if you think so. I won't be insulted.
> 
> PS: Mantis is not weak.
> 
> PPS: A slightly spoilerish discussion is in the comment section of this chapter, so don't read anyone else's reviews unless you like that kind of thing. I will try to privately message people if they ask me any spoilerish questions in the future. Sorry about that, folks.


	4. Complacency

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Sorry this took so long. As always, this work is unbetad, so please don't feel bad if you want to draw my attention to any corrections you think I should make.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me this far, guys. Enjoy!

As the sun dips below the horizon, Ego strolls through the courtyard outside his palace and admires the wildflowers. He’s noticed that the blue and purple hues always become more vibrant in the twilight. He learned on Earth that this phenomenon is called the ‘Purkinje effect’, where the peak luminance sensitivity of the eye shifts toward the lower wavelengths of the color spectrum in dim light. At night, with just the barest illumination, the world is subsequently reduced to various shades of grey, a peculiar condition of the human eye not shared with many other species.

Ego made a promise to himself eons ago that the final primary form of his avatar would match that of his celestial child, both to comfort his offspring and to honor the lowly species that contributed to its conception. Therefore, while he could easily improve the sensitivity of his eyes, he’s decided tonight that he will hold onto this charming quirk. At least for a little while. It makes him realize, in an odd sort of way, that he can better appreciate the color of his flowers when he knows their majesty is finite.

He supposes this is why Peter clings to his mortal qualities with such ferocity. Putting a cap on one’s gratification allows one to better appreciate the so-called ‘smaller’ things in life, although Ego still doesn’t understand the many obsessions of the lower lifeforms. Bright lights and thundering noise; sex, drugs, and alcohol—all of it distracts from the true splendor of the universe, the subtler beauties that existed long before any being could claim sentience and which will last long after all the pitiful mortals are gone

He doesn’t understand it—but he knows he _needs_ to, if only to better comprehend Peter.

As daylight fades and the starry sky blankets this side of the planet, Ego wanders among his ashen world until tiny sparks of luminescence drift up into the air, illuminating patches of green and gold in the long grass around his feet. He has walked this route every evening for almost a hundred thousand years and he still hasn’t grown tired of it. He has always marveled at the beauty he’s created. And he always will.

But in order to understand one of his greatest creations, he knows he needs a better idea of the life Peter’s lived. He knows what his son has accomplished through the proverbial grapevine, but the events that shaped Peter into the man he is today remain largely a mystery to Ego. In fact, it wasn’t until he met Peter himself for the first time that he realized Udonta kept him as a child.

That uncharacteristic betrayal is still something of a sore spot for Ego, but he’s fortunate that the man who knows Peter best is at his mercy. It certainly simplifies the process of collecting data on his son.

The ground trembles momentarily as it reforms behind him. It only takes a couple of seconds for Udonta to surface, sans the vines, spitting dirt and cursing up a storm. Ego gives him a moment to collect himself and then turns to face the Centaurian.

Realizing he hasn’t been restrained, Udonta wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and staggers to his feet. “Can’t be half-assed to come down for a visit anymore, can you?”

Ego hardly needs to visit his captives when he already intuitively knows they’re still alive. So long as he remembers to stock them up on supplies while he works on Peter, the thought of them is hardly worth occupying his mind.

Ego shrugs off Udonta’s remark. “I don’t see why I should. It’s not as though you’re going anywhere.”

Udonta spits again, more viciously this time, eyeing him up like a man trying to get a read on a particularly nasty beast. But his behaviour doesn’t match up with the way Udonta then cautiously asks, “Where’s the boy?”

“He’s resting,” Ego replies. He’s starting to get a little annoyed that everyone keeps asking him about the current state of everyone else. They should know by now that if he maimed or killed one of them without any kind of warning, he sure as hell wouldn’t advertise it. “He wants to speak with your group tomorrow and I’ve decided to grant his request.”

Udonta blinks at him with something akin to surprise. “He completed that ‘pilgrimage’ thing?”

Ego’s a little amazed he remembered that word. “Yes. Just today, in fact.”

“Did you hurt him?”

Ego is supposed to be asking the questions here, but the urge to defend his actions is compelling. “I haven’t raised so much as a hand against him,” he mutters. “I’ve left Peter to his own devices these last few weeks.”

“That don’t mean he didn’t get hurt,” Udonta points out, displaying considerable more wisdom than Ego ever expected to find in an ex warrior slave.

Ego waves his hand dismissively. “This line of inquiry is something Peter is more than capable of answering for himself. That’s not why I brought you up here.”

Udonta smiles at him then, red eyes narrowed, crooked teeth gleaming in the fluorescent light.  He watches Ego carefully as the celestial walks over to a nearby stone bench and takes a seat. Udonta remains standing.

Now that he’s settled, Ego sighs and says, “When you called me all those years ago to tell me Peter was dead, I didn’t believe you. I sent someone else to collect him and was informed that he went missing around the same time _you_ were supposed to be on Earth. Now, knowing of his… _association_ with you and the ‘Ravagers’, it’s occurred to me that you kept him all this time, although why you would want a terrified human on board your ship is beyond me. I don’t imagine he was cooperative in the beginning, least of all because none of you spoke his language.”

Udonta shrugs. “He climbed into an airshaft about an hour after we grabbed him. Kept him ’cause squeezing into tight spots is a natural gift for thieving.”

“I suppose he hated you with every fibre of his being.”

“Oh yeah,” Udonta chuckles, glancing off into the distance as though thinking back fondly on the experience. “Hated me more after implanting that translator, but he got over it. Quill’s a funny guy when you get to know him.”

Somehow, Ego doesn’t believe that. Given that humanity doesn’t yet realize Earth isn’t the only planet crawling with life, the mental image he has is of a young boy begging to go home.

Peter knew he’d been kidnapped—there’s no reason he should’ve warmed up to Udonta.

“He never asked you to return him to Earth?” Ego asks, searching for the truth.

Udonta shakes his head, eyes still focused on the dark horizon. “Nope.”

“Why not?”

Udonta laughs, but it sounds more like a bark. Cold and dismissive. Cruel. “For _what_? You killed his old lady. He ain’t ever ask me to take him back and I ain’t ever gonna offer. Earth’s in the backwater of _nowhere_.”

Part of Ego believes him now, but only because Peter’s made it abundantly clear how much his mother’s untimely death scarred him psychologically. Given the natural fire burning in Peter’s gut, Ego can see the boy avoiding Earth at all costs just to escape the memory of her passing. Besides, ‘Star Lord’ has never been known to venture that far out in the universe despite his Terran roots, implying he has no further use for his home planet.

As Ego mulls over this information, Udonta laughs again. When he offers no explanation for the little outburst, Ego squints at him and asks. “Do I _amuse_ you?”

“You sure as hell do,” Udonta chuckles. “You try’n to understand Quill? Well, he’s not much different now than he was as a boy—but if you wanted to know what _any_ of your kids were like, maybe you shouldn’t’ve killed ’em?”

Ego is momentarily blown away by the audacity of the other man. “You think you understand the complexity of my relationship with my children better than _I_ do?”

“You offed your kids,” Udonta replies bluntly, any trace of humor now completely gone. “I taught mine to fly, shoot, and drink.”

Ego rises slowly to his feet, chest swelling with anger and frustration. “Peter was never _your_ child.”

“Sure was,” Udonta snaps in retaliation. “I put the food in his mouth and the shirt on his back. I listened to his tunes on loop. I taught him how to be a man.”

“You are a _thief_ ,” Ego seethes, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. One of the consequences to being human, he realizes, is that he’s almost become a slave to his emotions—yet another weakness of Peter’s maternal lineage and one that’s not so charming. “You stole him away from his family.”

Slowly, Udonta shakes his head. “Nah. His family was that lovely lady you left back on Earth. _You_ stole him away from that, asshole.”

The ground trembles almost imperceptibly until it gives way like quicksand beneath Udonta’s feet. But nice and slow this time, because Ego wants the man to know how easily it would be to suffocate him on the way back down to his cell.

However, besides the initial shock of sinking, Udonta manages to keep a level head, not bothering to struggle as Ego pulls him slightly deeper. “You killed all those kids,” he continues, as if that fact alone trumps all of Udonta’s own misdemeanours. “You killed his kin-folk.”

“I didn’t _want_ to kill them,” Ego finally snaps, and it’s the truth. It was an unsavory side effect of connecting a child to the Light after they failed to display the ability to wield it on their own. It was the equivalent of licking a livewire and was therefore always his last resort when he couldn’t find so much as a trace of that special spark in Peter’s siblings.

The fact that Peter was able summon the Light on his first try was therefore the most amazing thing Ego had seen in a long time. And a massive relief.

 _Truly_ , he wasn’t alone anymore.

Ego closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, willing himself to relax. He searches for his son with his mind, focusing his attention on Peter as he weakly sips at the water Ego left on his bedside table. Evidently, he’s already eaten some of the fruit and is likely to give in to his exhaustion any minute now. Clearly, Peter is having considerable difficulty just keeping his eyes open.

Connecting to his boy is a uniquely soothing sensation. He can feel every heart beat, every laboured breath as Peter struggles to move. The boy is completely drained. His unwilling fast in the darkness of Ego’s core took the fight right out of him.

Calmer now, Ego opens his eyes. Udonta is up to his waist in quicksand, careful to keep his hands above his head and at the ready, obviously trying to formulate a way out of his current predicament.

Ego supposes he really shouldn’t kill the man.

With a wave of his hand, the quicksand ceases in its quest to consume the Centaurian. Udonta glances up at Ego in confusion.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Ego says. “I brought you up here so I could understand how to comfort my son. If you care so much about him, you’ll help me.”

Udonta scowls at him but doesn’t fling any more unnecessary insults in his face. Instead he says, “You wanna know what I did to calm him down as a kid?”

“Yes,” Ego presses impatiently.

“I gave him space.”

Ego snorts derisively at his captive. Udonta merely shrugs.

Underwhelmed by the other man’s advice, Ego pulls Udonta back under the surface of the earth, this time swiftly enough that Udonta reaches his cell before he runs out of oxygen. Then he levels the ground out until it’s as smooth as it was before their little meeting, leaving no evidence of Udonta’s ever being there, the stain of his presence effectively removed.

Irritated, Ego seeks out his son again. Tired as he is, Peter is agitated enough that he’s unable to do much more than doze fitfully. Ego likes to think they’re operating on a similar wavelength now, one where Peter can intuitively sense his ire. But in reality his restlessness could be due to any number of reasons. If he were to be honest, Ego would say Peter was probably thinking about his friends.

Ego sighs.

 _‘Friends’_ …

He can’t wait to cure Peter of that affliction.

~*~*~*~

Needless to say, Peter doesn’t sleep well that night. He wakes up several times covered in a cold sweat, panting, clutching the quilt as though it were a lifeline. He stays frozen like that until his eyes adjust to dark, aided by the starlight that streams in through the balcony doors and windows. The sky is a miasma of color, swirling nebulas and glittering stars, pulling him away from the nightmare of his lengthy imprisonment in the absolute darkness below the surface of Ego’s planet. Was he alone down there, he wonders, or was something hunting him?

He can’t remember.

Terrified as he is, he forces himself to turn over and close his eyes. He can’t help anyone if he’s dead on his feet.

Thankfully, the sun rises eventually on Ego’s extravagant palace and Peter climbs out of bed feeling thoroughly worn out. He wanders into the en suite to clean himself up for the day before changing back into the white shirt and trousers, wondering idly what Ego did with his original clothes before the devil himself waltzes into the room, looking too smug for Peter’s liking.

The bastard.

“Cheer up,” Ego says, unperturbed by Peter’s dour expression. “I have something for you.”

“My friends?” Peter inquires, tensing for a fight. After all, trapped as they are on this planet, Ego doesn’t necessarily have to be a man of his word.

Illusively, Ego steps aside and gestures to the door, slowly following after his son as Peter hotfoots it down the hallway and into the large atrium just outside his quarters.

The first person he catches sight of is Rocket.

And he’s never been so happy to see him.

“Are you for real?” Peter wonders aloud, which finally attracts the attention of his companion. Relieved, Peter jogs over to his friend—before collapsing half way there, face smarting and ears ringing, like someone just decked him in the face.

Rocket bursts out laughing.

Peter would feel embarrassed except his head is spinning and he’s honestly just too happy to see the little jerk again. He pushes himself up onto his feet slowly and then tentatively reaches forward to touch the glass panel he collided with, mystified by its sudden appearance.

Rocket’s still doubled over, gasping for breath as his laughter slowly peters out. Then he straightens up and says, “Your father has a strange obsession with glass. Not the breakable kind either.”

“That _is_ strange,” Peter mutters sarcastically, rubbing the tender bridge of his nose. He glances back at the man in question as Ego steps into the atrium. “And kind of unnecessary. Why can’t we touch each other?”

“Why would you need to?” Ego asks quietly, still looking smug as he folds his hands behind his back and begins pacing across the far side of the room.

Peter elects to ignore him and turns back to his friends. It’s then that he realizes there’s only three of them—Rocket, Drax, and Groot.

Immediately, his heart sinks.

“Is something wrong?” Drax asks, giving Peter the once over. His eyes linger on Peter’s white attire. “Have you been meditating?”

“No,” Peter replies. “I just…I can’t believe there’s only three of you. Is Gamora, uh…did she—”

“Nobody’s dead,” Rocket quickly corrects him. “Not Gamora or her crazy sister—or any of the other weirdoes, for that matter. Hasn’t your old man been keeping you up to date?” Rocket tilts his head to one side, glancing around Peter’s legs to get a better look at Ego. “Speaking of which—does he _have_ hover in the background like that? Can’t he take a hike for a couple of hours?”

“Does his absence matter?” Drax inquires. “He can hear us anywhere on or inside the planet.”

“Inside?” Peter asks, his brain latching onto that one word immediately. Bile rises in his throat as he thinks back to the hell he endured the past two weeks. “You guys were trapped underground too? Did you have food and water?”

Rocket gives him a weird look. “Well, yeah. Kinda need that to survive, man.” He chuckles a little, as though to laugh off Peter’s seemingly stupid question. But then he really _looks_ at Peter and his smile slowly fades away. “What has he been doing to you? You’re…leaner than I remember.”

“Quill’s been meditating,” Drax reiterates, even though Peter’s already corrected him on that matter. “His disgusting lack of muscle mass and the dark rings around his eyes are a consequence of fasting and sleep deprivation.”

Peter doesn’t bother to argue with him. In fact, he almost prefers that lie to the truth, simply because he can only imagine how his companions would react if they knew what he’d really been through. So, he sighs and says, “Yeah, sure. I’ve been meditating.”

Drax smiles triumphantly.

Rocket looks pissed.

“What?” Peter asks, suddenly feeling even less at ease.

“Don’t lie to us, man,” Rocket snarls, lips pulled back to reveal his tiny little fangs as he shuffles over a little to get a better view of Ego. Raising his voice, he says, “You’ve been torturing your own son, you psychopath?!”

“Rocket—” Peter tries to interject, alarmed. He knows all too well how temperamental Ego can be.

Peter doesn’t want to watch him cut down one of his friends.

“Shut it,” Rocket snaps at Peter, but there’s no real venom in it. “Yondu said Ego wasn’t going to let us talk to you until you were ‘ _ready_ ’ to see us. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Yondu’s here?” Peter asks, completely side-blinded by that revelation. Then again, his memory of how Ego got a leg over on him and his team is still a bit murky, so it’s entirely plausible somebody else decided to join the fight. Yondu sailing into action mid-way through one of Peter’s battles is kind of his hallmark move anyway, at least since Peter was seventeen and capable of pissing people off enough that they’d want to skin him alive.

“Don’t change the subject,” Rocket mutters before focusing his frustration back on Ego, thumping his tiny fist against the glass. “What’s your damage, _huh_? Is that how you killed your other kids?! _Starved_ them to death?”

Fear lances through Peter’s body like a bolt from the heavens, paralyzing him. The sensation is unlike anything he’s felt before. Which is really saying something when he considers the kind of danger he used to put himself in willing when he was young and stupid.

Or, rather, young and stupid _er_.

And he feels kind of stupid now for assuming this little meet and greet would go smoothly. He should’ve put more thought into this before asking to see his friends.

Predictably, there’s only so many verbal barbs Ego can pretend to ignore before he gravitates toward their little group, sauntering over with his eyes slightly narrowed, like he’s cruising for a fight of his own.

Peter kicks the glass in front of Rocket, just hard enough to startle his friend back a step. “ _Thank you_ , Rocket, but I can handle this.”

“Like hell you can.”

“ _Please_ ,” Peter says, pouring every ounce of supplication into that one word in the hopes that Rocket will relent. He doesn’t like where this is headed and he knows Rocket won’t like it much either.

Rocket opens his mouth to dish out another smart remark, but Drax beats him to the punch by saying, “He asked politely.”

Rocket whips his head around to give the other man an incredulous look. “Who exactly do you think you’re helping here?”

Without missing a beat, Drax says, “Peter.”

That shuts them both up.

Baffled, Peter wonders when Drax became so…so…

“Annoying,” Ego mutters, standing shoulder to shoulder with Peter now, staring down at Rocket with obvious disdain. “Aren’t you?”

“It’s a gift,” Rocket replies, crossing his arms.

“Did it come with the other modifications?”

Rocket bares his teeth again. “Why you little—”

“Rocket,” Peter says, softly but sternly. “We’ve already established that my father is an asshole. You can relax.”

And relax he does, perhaps because he wasn’t expecting Peter to side with him. Neither was Ego, if his curious side-glance at the Peter is anything to go by.

Peter might’ve just made a big mistake right then, but that’s just how he rolls through life he realizes. He pokes the proverbial bear before he realizes what he’s doing and then waits to see if it’ll claw his face off.

After one hell of a long, tense moment, Ego goes back to eyeing his companions as though he’s discovered something particularly nasty. “I don’t see why you’d want to visit these creatures. All you do is argue.”

“You’ve deprived us of the sun for too long,” Drax supplies. “We are feeling less than…friendly.”

“And some of us—” Rocket mutters, gesturing to where Groot is half hiding behind his left leg, “—are starting to _wilt_.”

“Hmm,” Ego hums, sounding unconcerned.

“Why not move them aboveground?” Peter asks cautiously. “It’s not as though they can run anywhere if they escape.”

Ego levels him an indecipherable look, but Peter figures the man is at least considering his request because he wouldn’t hesitate to say otherwise. And he’s proven correct when Ego glances back down at Groot and says, “Not all of them at once…The twig will be the first. We’ll see how well it behaves.”

Groot inches out from behind Rocket, eyes wide with surprise. Quietly, he says, “I am Groot.”

Seemingly mystified, Ego tilts his head to one side and says, “How does it speak without lungs?”

Peter blinks.

Both Rocket and Drax eye Groot curiously too. Considering how long they’ve all known the little guy, it _is_ rather odd that they never once considered how he was able to speak, even with a vocabulary as limited as his.

“Never mind,” Ego says, waving his hand dismissively. “I don’t actually care. Just as long as it isn’t chatty.”

“Those are literally the only three words he knows,” Peter replies.

“Very well.” Seemingly satisfied, Ego sharply turns about-face and strolls off toward the main entranceway to the gardens. Over his shoulder, he says, “Say goodbye to the others.”

“Wait— _why_?”

Ego slows to a halt and turns again. “Why what?”

“We just got here,” Rocket replies. “Why the hell are you sending us back down now?”

“Are you not satisfied, Peter?” Ego asks, seeming genuinely confused. “You now have proof that your friends are alive and well. What’s more, you’ve negotiated better living conditions for them. Have I not been generous?”

Peter can’t tell if Ego is so socially inept that he doesn’t understand what the problem is here of if he’s just _that_ _much_ of a sociopath. The problem with not knowing is that Peter isn’t sure how far he can push his luck before Ego decides he doesn’t want to play nice anymore.

Tentatively, Peter says, “Well… _yes_ , but I haven’t seen them in over two weeks. That’s the longest we’ve been apart since we got together.”

Ego nods slowly, as though he understands. “…Maybe next time?”

Then he waves his hand.

Peter feels a deep and terrible rumble beneath his feet before he hears his friends cry out in alarm. He pivots around just in time to catch sight of Drax’s head disappearing through a large, gaping hole in the floor as both he and Rocket are returned to their prison, Groot scrambling madly to avoid the small spray of dust and debris as the mosaic tiling clambers mysteriously back into place. Peter is both horrified and amazed by the display, although he’s immediately startled out of his stupor when the glass partition shatters seemingly of its own volition, shards ringing upon impact with the ground before melting away into water.

“Holy shit,” Peter gasps, taking a step back.

After a beat, Groot begins to cry.

“Oh, hey—” Concerned Peter crouches down to scoop his small companion up into his arms. Once settled against his shoulder, Groot burrows his head into the crook of Peter’s neck and continues making odd little shrieking noises until Peter gives him a gentle pat on the back. “You’re okay. They’re okay…We’ll see them again sometime soon, buddy.”

Giving the floor one last baffled look, Peter turns around to find his father staring at them. Ego eyes Groot for a long moment before giving Peter yet another indecipherable look.

Peter doesn’t know what the other man is thinking. All he _does_ know is that Groot feels stiffer under his touch— _drier_ , so he clears his throat and says, “Could I get him some water?”

 “Of course,” Ego replies before turning away again.

Cautiously, Peter follows him.

Just outside the doorway, Ego had erected a small, golden table loaded up with a variety of fruits and breads and something that looks an awful lot like dried meat, although Peter can only guess at it’s origin. His stomach rumbles at the sight of the food, but he hesitates to start wolfing anything down while Groot is in his arms, which is why he waits for Ego to lay an empty silver bowl down at the far end of the table and produce bottle of water out of seemingly nowhere. Ego pours the water out into the bowl and then gestures Peter forward.

Almost immediately, that horribly parched sensation he suffered for days on end underground returns with a vengeance, but he ignores it as he sets Groot down on the table beside the bowl. Groot eagerly climbs in, taking a seat smack dab in the middle so that the water is up to his chest before he makes a soft sound of satisfaction.

Peter grins.

“Here,” Ego says, reaching across the table to pour juice from a pitcher into a glass. Peter takes it without question, tilting his head back to down it all in one go.

As soon as he’s finished, his father hands him another one. Peter sips at this one as he eyes the food. He’s famished, but he holds himself in check. “Is this what you’ve been feeding my friends?”

“More of the dried and salted variety,” Ego replies as he picks up one of his ‘apples’ and rolls it between his hands. “I only go down to check up on them every few days, so I need to supply them with the kind of food that won’t spoil easily.”

As Ego contemplates his peach monstrosity, Peter glances over at Groot, who nods in affirmation of Ego’s claim.

Unsettled by the fruit, Peter reaches over to grab a piece of dried meat and takes a bite. Astonishingly, it tastes just like beef jerky he used to scarf down as a kid. “Do you eat?” he asks.

“If I want,” Ego replies. Then, as though to prove a point, he sinks his teeth into the fruit. Peter watches curiously as Ego munches on it for a while before he swallows and says, “The flavor doesn’t quite match the texture, does it?”

Peter shakes his head as he grabs a bun off the table and polishes it off in a few bites.

Ego lets him eat in relative silence as he continues to contemplate his peculiar creation. He also completely ignores Groot, even when the little guy stands up in the dish and starts splashes the water around with his legs. The tiny sprouts on his left shoulder and his head look greener now, so Peter relaxes and watches him play, relieved that he was able to save at least one of his companions today.

Once he’s satiated, Peter puts his cup down and turns to his father. “Given your good humor this morning, I’m guessing there’s something you want in return now.”

“You make it sound like a business transaction,” Ego quips, but he doesn’t sound insulted. “I want to try a simple exercise with you.”

Peter doesn’t know if Ego’s realizes an ‘exercise’ isn’t supposed to be even half as intense as the last trial-by-fire he put Peter through, but he sees no point in correcting the man. Ego will do whatever he wants, regardless of anyone’s opinion.

“What’s the exercise?” Peter asks.

Ego smiles. “You’re going to make a plant.”

“A plant? As in the green stuff? As in—” Peter jabs his thumb at Groot, “—this guy?”

Ego glances at Groot and shakes his head. “Nowhere near as animated. I hope. And it doesn’t have to be ‘green’. You are more than welcome to use your imagination.”

If Ego knew just how wild his imagination was he probably wouldn’t have said that, but Peter doesn’t bother correcting him. After all, if he can figure out how to make a plant on his own, how long before he can unlock the mystery to making his own spaceship?

Peter shrugs and transfers Groot from the bowl to his shoulder before following his father out into the wilderness of his psychedelic planet.

They don’t travel too far. Ego continues onward until they reach a small clearing surrounded by tall redwood trees with green and turquoise leaves, glistening like gems in the sunlight. He toes the dirt under one such tree, frowning before he waves Peter over. Then he crouches down and places his hand flat against the earth.

“Watch,” Ego instructs as he slowly lifts it back up. As he does, a small tendril of light pokes up from the damp earth, curling lazily over itself until the light dims, leaving a blue sprout in its wake.

On Peter’s shoulder, Groot inhales sharply in surprise.

“You can mimic me or you can come up with something of your own,” Ego says as he rises to his full height. “Go ahead.”

Peter has no idea what he’s doing, but he goes through the motions anyway. He crouches down next to his father’s sprout and rests his hand against the warm earth.

He only vaguely remembers how he was able to harness his powers the first time Ego showed him, but thankfully it isn’t that difficult to sense the energy thrumming beneath the surface. He can feel it vibrating all the way up from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, so potent it’s practically resonating in his bones.

Taking a deep breath, he lets it all out.

And consequently blows a hole through the ground.

Dirt sprays up into his hair and face. Thankfully his mouth was closed, but Groot’s wasn’t, as is evident by the great heaving coughs that wrack his tiny body.

Ego laughs.

Shaken, Peter rises to his feet, dusting off his hands as he surveys the damage. He destroyed Ego’s sprout, but thankfully the man doesn’t look too upset about it.

“I’m going to need a little more instruction,” Peter mutters. He doesn’t know how he didn’t blow his own feet off with that blast.

“You’re pulling the energy in through your legs, aren’t you?”

Peter blinks at him in surprise. “Uh…yeah, actually.”

“That’s alright if you want to harness the raw energy in your bare hands, but you don’t know how to create matter from scratch yet so I would have to advise you against it. At least for now. What you need to do is pull the energy up through your hands instead. The matter is already there at your fingertips—just focus on coaxing the dirt into becoming something else.”

“I’ll be honest,” Peter sighs as he crouches down once again, just a little to left of his small crater, “I barely remember any biology from grade school. I don’t even remember the major differences between plant and animal cells.”

Well—he does remember _one_ thing, which was that the former had chloroplasts and the latter had mitochondria, but that was the extent of it. He’s encountered so many exceptions to the laws of Terran science on his adventures through space, it makes Earth’s education system seem grossly inadequate for understanding much of anything in the universe.

“You don’t need to,” Ego says. “It’s _your_ plant. Define it however you want.”

Peter sighs.

Easier said then done.

But he gives it the old college try. He focuses on sensing the energy with his hands first, feeling that all-too familiar thrum in his bones. The energy flows into him so easily, it’s downright frightening, but he stomps down on his fear as he tries to think about the ground and the little sprout he’s trying to pull up from it.

He gets dirt in his face again.

Fed up now with his failure, Groot slides down his arm and marches toward the base of the tree, taking up a seat on a gnarled root.  

Ego laughs again, sounding genuinely amused. “You’re powerful, son. Just think of what you’ll accomplish someday.”

Peter’s sure the old man means that in terms of ‘universal domination’, but Peter just thinks about the various ways in which he can use these powers to get him and his companions out of this hell hole.

Resolute, Peter tries it again on a new patch of earth as his father wanders off into the forest. And again. And again…

After the twentieth attempt, he makes a smidgen of progress. Instead of blowing the ground away, he pulls it _up_ a little, the soil shifting to make a small mound beneath his hand. He plays with it then, rolling the earth from side to side, until it’s almost as tall as Groot—which gives him the awful idea of molding a small statue of his friend.

Groot finally ventures from his perch on the tree root to inspect it. He strokes its cheek almost lovingly and then points to himself, staring up at Peter with wide-eyed wonder.

“What do you want to name him?”

“I…am Groot.”

Peter makes a face. “Why ‘ _Stanley_ ’?”

Groot shrugs.

“That’s an interesting ‘plant’,” Ego says, seemingly materializing beside Peter out of thin air.

His sudden appearance scares the bejesus out of Peter, who scrambles to his feet and almost topples back over for his efforts. It takes him a moment to compose himself. “Christ—can’t you announce yourself or something?”

Ego shrugs. “As you’re already aware, I don’t get too many visitors.” Then he returns his attention to Peter’s creation. “You’re getting closer.”

Exhausted, Peter wanders over to the tree, leaning back against the trunk as he dusts his hands off again. He’s covered from head to toe in dirt. His white clothes are beyond ruined at this point.

He would really just like to lie down in the shade and take a nap right about now.

“You’ve made excellent progress,” Ego says as he walks over to join Peter. “Give it a few more days and you’ll be able to develop a better imitation of life. Unless, of course, you would prefer a little help now—”

Before Peter realizes what exactly Ego is offering him, the other man raises his right hand and reaches out to touch Peter’s forehead with his index finger. The gesture triggers an uncomfortable flashback though, one dominated by the vast expanse of space and a remodeled cluster of planets—basically Ego’s utopia, a mess of colour and light and an alarming reduction in the number of other free-willed lifeforms.

Peter jerks himself away from his father and winds up smacking the back of his head hard against the tree trunk. Ego freezes there with his hand up, either insulted by the gesture or merely confused by it. Almost immediately though, he reaches forward again—but this time to cup the side of Peter’s face, stroking his thumb gently over the jut of his cheek with the kind of fondness Peter assumed he was incapable of emoting.

It certainly doesn’t help that his hand is cold. Peter resists the urge to flinch away again and stands his ground. He isn’t touched by the gesture but he’s not stupid enough to piss the guy off by rejecting him.

At least, not until his friends are in the clear.

After what feels like a small eternity, Ego smiles faintly and drops his hand. “I’m proud of your progress today. You can continue working on it if you like or you can return to your quarters and clean up. All I ask is that you don’t let your companion out of your sight.”

“Okay,” Peter replies, not sure what else he should say to the other man.

Ego nods in satisfaction and turns away, disappearing once again into the vast wilderness of his planet.

Peter has no idea what the guy does to entertain himself in a day, but he imagines Ego spends at least 90% of his time fantasizing about his great Expansion. Peter grimaces at the thought and returns to his little statue, crouching down to watch Groot slap mud onto the upper arms of his newfound friend.

It takes Peter a moment, but eventually he gets it: “Are you giving him muscles?” he chuckles.

Groot nods excitedly.

“Cool,” he says, crossing his legs to get more comfortable. “But I like you just the way you are.”

Groot smiles. Then he slaps a glob of mud between Stanley’s legs.

Peter blinks in surprise.

He’s going to have a long chat with the other guys about how they’ve been educating their youngest team member behind his back…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Baby Groot is probably the cutest invention in the Marvel Movie-verse. The world needs more of him.


	5. It's complicated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hey folks! Sorry for the long wait. I'm going away for vacation soon, so I've been scrambling to get my regular work done. I hope you enjoy the new chapter.

For as long as Kraglin’s known him, Peter always been a complicated creature.

Pipsqueak that he was when they abducted him, Peter had a surprisingly strong set of lungs. He screamed incomprehensibly as he knelt on the gangplank overlooking the main hanger, clutching his little bag to his chest, kicking out at anyone who tried to touch him. Agon and Felin had been tasked with delivering him to the Captain once he was on board the Eclector, but they were nearing the end of their shift and looked as though they didn’t have the energy to deal with his antics. So, they just stood there for a while, waiting for the boy to run out of gas, a wise enough decision had they been dealing with any other child.

But Peter Quill wasn’t just any other child.

He was trouble incarnate.

He bolted past them between one quivering breathe and the next. Kraglin, who’d been hanging around on the gangplank just above them, was amused for about the first five seconds it took them to realize what had happened and react. But that amusement quickly turned to concern when Peter dived behind a stack of crates and didn’t immediately re-emerge. Agon shoved them aside to reveal a hastily opened grate in the wall just large enough to admit a small human child, and it was then that true madness descended as everyone scrambled to find the boy before Yondu discovered he was missing.

Of course, Yondu found out anyway, which accumulated in an awful lot of cussing and numerous threats of a swift trip out the airlock before the Captain ordered Kraglin and a few of the other leaner members of their crew to climb around inside the ventilation shafts. That was probably the least favorite memory Kraglin had of Peter as a child, but the fact that he was the one to eventually nab him made up for it, even if he did get a boot in the face for his efforts. He dragged the boy kicking and screaming out into the mess hall and tossed him over his shoulder before marching down to the hold. He had half a mind to throw Peter in the brig, but the cells were in a ghastly condition and Peter was ‘cargo’ anyway, so the hold was where he belonged—confined to a tiny storage room with a small nest of blankets and a door that only locked from the outside.

And there Peter remained as Yondu hemmed and hawed over whether or not he believed Ego’s tall tale of wanting to be reunited with his plethora of children. Kraglin wasn’t the first mate back then, but he was close enough to the Captain to be considered part of his inner circle. Therefore, he was there when Yondu made the fateful decision to keep the Terran (because he could ‘squeeze into tight places’). He was also there when Yondu got that awful call from Stakar Ogord, but Kraglin tried not to dwell on that particular memory too often. It was a complicated affair, possibly the _only_ thing more complicated that dealing with a moody eight-year-old Terran who was suddenly given the go-ahead to roam the ship freely.

Naturally, Peter took that as an invitation to explore every dark corner of the ship, although for all his wild wanderings, Kraglin didn’t encounter Peter again for almost twenty cycles. When he finally did run into the kid, it was in the hanger of all places, sitting on a gangplank with his little legs dangling over the edge, his ‘Walkman’ and earphones rolled up together on his lap. He looked pale and worn out, although Kraglin initially chalked up his sad expression to homesickness.

Now, Kraglin wasn’t what you would call a sensitive person. He’d only made it as far as he had through the ranks because he was good at killing, stealing, and causing an ungodly amount of property damage whenever the mood struck him, but he wasn’t completely heartless. It was therefore more of a strategic move than anything else when he pulled a bit of dried meat out of his jacket pocket and approached the boy, wholly intent on making an ally out of Peter before Terra defaulted to the idea that Kraglin was his enemy.

Lost as he was in thought, Peter didn’t notice Kraglin until he was practically standing over him. The boy flinched in surprise and craned his head back to get a better look at the Xandarian—and it was then that Kraglin realized why the kid really seemed so out of it.

The right side of Peter’s head was shaved bare, revealing a hastily stitched-up scar that ran back behind his ear and down his neck. It was obvious someone had finally fixed him with a translator, although the kid looked none too happy about it. Kraglin couldn’t exactly blame him.

It looked like a complete hack-job.

Feeling just the slightest twinge of sympathy, Kraglin took a bite of his dried meat and then crouched down beside Peter. “You want some?”

Peter made a face and flinched away. “If you were going to offer it to me, why would you eat it?”

Kraglin blinked in surprise, both because the kid’s brain had adapted to the translator much sooner than he would’ve expected and because he thought for sure the gesture was obvious. “So you’d know it ain’t poisoned,” he replied, holding out the meat.

Peter stared at him for a moment before cautiously taking it. He nibbled on it for a moment before taking a heartier bite—but just the one before he stopped, tears welling up in his eyes. Working his jaw was probably tugging on his stitches, which Peter pretty much confirmed when he sobbed, “ _It hurts_.”

“I know,” Kraglin sighed. He heard the kid was usually good at calming himself down by listening to his Walkman, but that obviously wasn’t an option anymore until he healed from the surgery. “But better now than later. You need to know what we’re saying.”

Peter sniffled pitifully. “I look stupid,” he muttered.

“Nah,” Kraglin chuckled. Half the crew had partially shaven heads, Kraglin included. In fact, since the kid still had quite a bit of hair on top, there was an easy enough solution to his problem, “Want me to fix that?”

Peter gave him a long, hard look, like he didn’t know if Kraglin could be trusted. Given what happened their last encounter, Kraglin could understand his hesitation.

Then Peter glanced down at the dried meat in his hand and finally nodded.

Kraglin gave the kid a hearty slap on the back. “Follow me.”

Cautiously, Peter trailed quietly after Kraglin as he began his search for a clean razor and some string. Once he found what he needed, He shaved off enough hair on the left side of Peter’s head to match the right, leaving a long, thick strip down the middle. Then he wove the string through the remaining hair at odd intervals to keep it pulled back in a low ponytail, smiling triumphantly when he finally showed Peter his reflection with the blade of his boot knife.

“You look like one of them Asgardians,” Kraglin laughed. He’d never met one personally, but he’d heard plenty of stories about them.

And apparently Peter had too, taking that as an invitation to yammer on excitedly about the many tales his mother used to tell him of Thor and the other ‘Vikings’, as though the Asgardians visited Earth every other day. For all Kraglin knew, they probably did. Asgard was supposedly in the same neighborhood as the kid’s planet anyway.

Feeling oddly triumphant at having made a small child happy for once in his miserable life, Kraglin patiently sat with the kid in the hallway just outside the main sleeping quarters and listened to his peculiar tales until Yondu stumbled across them on the way to his room. He did a double take when he saw the kid’s hair and slowed to a halt as they both scrambled to their feet.

“What the…?’ the Captain muttered, grabbing Peter by the arm as the boy tried to slink behind Kraglin. Yondu pinched the kid’s chin with his other hand and turned his face aside to get a better look at the scar. Kraglin could tell he was pissed. “They butchered him.”

Wide-eyed and afraid, Peter said nothing.

Yondu sternly handed the boy back to Kraglin. “Cover that up and sedate him. I’m gonna have a chat with the new doc.”

“Yessir,” Kraglin said.

“Didn’t you tell them to?” Peter snapped, finally finding his voice.

“Didn’t I what?” Yondu asked, planting his hands on his hips as he leveled Peter with a look that said he clearly wasn’t interested in having a lengthy conversation with a child at this ungodly hour.

“They said you wanted me to have the surgery,” Peter seethed, tiny hands clenched into white knuckled fists at his sides.

“Damn straight.” Yondu replied. “Can’t learn if you can’t listen.”

“I don’t _want_ to speak your stupid language!” Peter snapped. “And I don’t want to learn anything from _you_! I want you to let me go!”

Kraglin knew that if the kid didn’t just have brain surgery, Yondu would’ve smacked him upside the head so hard he would’ve seen stars. But instead Yondu just smiled at the boy, slow and predatory, silver-capped teeth gleaming in the dim light as he gleefully replied, “ _No_.”

“Why?!” Peter shrieked, sounding as though he’d reached the end of his rope. Kraglin wondered if he wasn’t still a little squirrely from the whatever drugs they gave him for the surgery or if this was just the way Peter had been taught to cope with his problems back on Earth: scream at the person in charge and hope for the best.

It didn’t seem like the greatest survival strategy in the universe.

“Stole you fair and square,” Yondu chuckled. “And now you’re gonna work with us or I’m gonna feed you to the boys.”

Peter glanced up at Kraglin questioningly.

Kraglin, ever faithful to the Captain, simply smirked.

Uncertainty creeping into his spine now, Peter decided to dial down on the volume. But the venom was still dripping from his voice as he said, “I _hate_ you.”

“Hate me all you want. You ain’t leaving.”

“My dad will come for me.”

That gave Yondu pause. Nobody had any idea what Peter knew of his father, thanks mostly to the fact that they hadn’t been able to have a half-way decent conversation with the boy until he’d gotten his implant.

Kraglin could practically see the gears turning inside the Captain’s head as Yondu finally asked the million-unit question: “What do know about your daddy?”

Peter opened his mouth to speak, and then slowly closed it again. Apparently, he didn’t know all that much. “Mom said he came from the stars…She said he was going to come for me someday.”

Yondu smirked. “And somebody _did_.”

Peter frowned, staring at Yondu for an awfully long time before he finally said, “You don’t _look_ like an angel.”

Kraglin burst out laughing.

He didn’t know what Terrans thought angels looked like, but from what he’d heard of their ethereal beauty, Yondu was a _long_ way from counting himself among their numbers.

Yondu laughed a little too, but he sounded tired more than anything else. “Boy, I’m as close as you’re gonna get to a daddy in this lifetime, so shut it already and behave yourself. I want no more of your complaining.”

“I’m going to make you regret taking me,” Peter replied, so matter-of-fact it was almost adorable.

“Ha.” Yondu deadpanned. Then he nodded at Kraglin. “Sedate him, yeah?”

Kraglin thumped his chest in salute. “Yessir.”

“But I don’t want to go to sleep,” Peter muttered, true to his childish nature, eyes boring into the back of Yondu’s head as the Captain pivoted sharply on his heel and walked away.

“Can’t heal if you don’t rest,” Kraglin replied, his fingers curling naturally around the small hand that slipped in his own before he led the little boy back to the med-bay.

As unusual as it was to see someone argue so openly with the Captain, Kraglin honestly thought that would be the extent of Peter’s wild outbursts. Surely, the kid would wise up to his new place among the Ravagers and behave accordingly before too long.

Right?

But that was really only the beginning of the tyranny of Peter Quill, the Terran boy who’d pushed the limit wherever he knew he could and taught himself to steal from his crewmates long before Yondu sent him to steal from anyone else. He was a hellion at the worst of times, but quite humorous all the same, pinching random trinkets from the other Ravagers before sneaking them onto Yondu’s dashboard or into Kraglin’s pockets.

Kraglin made a lot of friends by ‘finding’ his crewmate’s things for them.

He often wondered if that was Peter’s game all along.

Of course, as much as they got along on a day to day basis, he and Peter had their quarrels too. Peter hung around him a lot because Kraglin was one of the few people on board that looked like a Terran, which meant people usually called on him to rein the boy in whenever he got out of hand. Which was often. And which Kraglin hated. He didn’t particularly enjoy doling out punishments to a child for mouthing off to someone, even if it was just back-to-back shifts of kitchen duty—and neither did Yondu, apparently, which is why he made Kraglin do it, although only after threatening (once again) to feed Peter to the crew if he didn’t start behaving himself.

It got both harder and easier to get along with Peter after Kraglin’s predecessor passed away and he became first mate. He didn’t have to discipline Peter personally anymore, but he didn’t have the chance to spend his downtime with him either. He had no more ‘downtime’ actually, unless they were docked on a trading planet, but the places he frequented when he wanted to unwind weren’t exactly appropriate for a child and so Peter spent most of his timrcooped up on the ship, either alone in his room or begrudgingly learning a personal life lesson about being a Ravager from Yondu himself.

Peter also got harder to handle as he got older, his biggest issue being his truly erratic attitude toward being taken in by ‘space pirates’. Sometimes he seemed rather amused with the whole situation, having learned how to shoot and fly within his first year aboard their ship, a privilege few boys his age would ever experience. He was funny and light-spirited and knew how to push Yondu’s buttons in the most amusing way, becoming something of a natural comedian by the time he was a teenager. But there were also times when he seemed to remember that he’d been kidnapped and that he’d likely live out the rest of his life with his abductors, and it was then that Kraglin could see the fury and the fear bubbling back to the surface of boy’s uncharacteristically calm facade.

Peter got that same distant look in his eyes the first time he tried to escape the Eclector on one of their M-ships. Thankfully, no one had taught Peter how to jump yet so he didn’t get very far, but Yondu had been livid. Kraglin got an earful from him even though he’d had nothing to do with it—and that pretty much summed up his key issue with Peter Quill, both as a child and a man: when he was cheery and clever and at the top of his game, Peter was the kind of guy you always wanted to have at your back; but when he was miserable or anxious, pretty much everyone within spitting distance suffered for it.

More than once, Kraglin brought up the idea of dropping the kid off on his original planet or anywhere else someone more capable than a Ravager clan could look after him, but Yondu wasn’t wrong about the fact that Ego was still hellbent on collecting his children. They’d heard stories through the grapevine of bounty hunters and the like razing whole villages to the ground on behalf of a supposedly sentient planet, so it went without saying that there was no safer place for Peter to be than on the kind of ship that typically flew under everyone else’s radars. Like it or not, the Eclector was where Peter would remain until he was old enough to fend for himself.

That’s not to say Yondu _never_ let the kid leave the ship unsupervised. In fact, as soon as Peter found a middle ground between his delightful and dickish personalities as an adult, Yondu would let him leave for cycles on end. And somehow Peter managed to surprise Kraglin by always coming back, although it was obvious Yondu already knew he would. He’d often say as much whenever Peter was away, as though he could read the poor kid’s mind.

Peter belonged with them.

Kraglin used to wonder how badly they screwed the kid up psychologically for him to _want_ to return, but this whole journey into the belly of a planetary beast has only served to hammer his long-time suspicions home: that the relationship between Peter and Yondu was far more complicated than anyone ever appreciated. Clearly Yondu always liked the moron—and Peter, consciously or not, reciprocated those feelings.

 _That_ was why the boy always returned to them.

And the truth of it is painfully obvious in the look of murder in Yondu’s eyes as Drax and Rocket tell them how Peter is faring. According to them, he looks emaciated and exhausted. Browbeaten.

Frightened.

The green chick is none too pleased with their analysis. Gamora punches the wall of her cell so hard she bloodies her knuckles, leaving a long green smear on the glass. The resounding crack gives everyone a start, even Yondu, who looks like he’s got a storm of his own brewing inside his mind.

“That d’ast father of his is trying to wear him down,” Yondu mutters coldly, pacing back and forth across his tiny cell.

“Peter won’t succumb to Ego,” Gamora bites back, fuming. Kraglin knows where she probably wishes she could plant her fist right now, unlikely as it is she’ll ever get the opportunity.

“If he does, would you hold it against him?”

Gamora freezes at his question. She looks like she has some choice words for him, but then the deep furrow of her brow relaxes as she realizes the severity of his question.

Kraglin sighs.

This just might be the battle they all lose.

“I hate his father too,” Yondu continues, still slowly pacing. “I should’ve told Peter what I knew.”

Rocket flops down onto his mattress, taking his tail in hand to pick out the larger clumps of dirt still sticking to the hairs. “Knowing Quill, he would’ve here come anyway just to kick his old man’s ass. And where he goes, we go. This whole krutacking situation was inevitable.”

“Inevitable…” Gamora echoes quietly. “Peter is the most stubborn man in the universe. He won’t give in.”

“Can you be certain of that?” the cyborg says, her dark eyes searching first Rocket and then her sister for an answer. “When we were prisoners of Thanos, we did everything he asked of us and more. Being stubborn didn’t help us then and it won’t help him now.”

An uneasy silence descends over their group. Given what he’d heard already, Kraglin knows Peter doesn’t stand much of a chance of resisting his father’s influence. All Ego has to do is string him up again and that will be that. No more universe. No more life as they know it.

It makes Kraglin wonder why Ego is dragging this process out.

After a long moment of quiet contemplation, Kraglin clears his throat. All eyes are suddenly on him.

“Being stubborn has helped him plenty in the past,” he says, thinking about the small and complicated boy they kidnapped so many years ago. “He’s going to make his old man regret hurting him.”

For perhaps the first time since he’s met her, Gamora flashes him the barest of grins. Nebula, on the other hand, sighs and turns away, unconvinced.

Yondu stares at Kraglin for a moment and then nods his head. “That boy can hold a grudge.”

“Whatever happens, Peter will avenge us,” Drax chimes in.

“Or save us,” Rocket supplies. “And preferentially, I’m leaning toward the latter.”

They fall silent again, although this time they look relieved more than anything else. In fact, if the meaningful glances Peter’s crew keep sharing with each other are anything to go by, Kraglin would almost say they already know just how the Terran is going to go about releasing them from this prison.

Frowning thoughtfully, Kraglin settles on his mattress and stares down across the cells at Nebula. Her eyes are completely black, so it’s hard to tell if she’s staring right back at him, but she keeps her head level as she thumps the glass wall behind her and snaps at the woman to quit her whining. That simply triggers another argument between her and Drax, which everyone else blatantly ignores in the interest of sparing their sanity.

Again, Kraglin feels as though something deeper is going on here beyond what he is seeing.

Something horribly, wonderfully… _complicated_.

~*~*~*~

Peter remembers the first time he was denied time off-ship as a Ravager.

He was still only eight years old and homesick beyond belief. The brunt of Yondu’s crew had been excused for the next couple of cycles so they could finally spend the units they’d earned on their last job, but they hadn’t parked the Eclector on the ground like Peter thought they would. Peter vaguely remembers Kraglin saying something along the lines that Yondu wanted to avoid being spotted by an old enemy, so the crew was instead given the go ahead to take a couple of M-ships down to the glowing pink and blue planet that Peter could see through the starboard windows on the Eclector. It was the first time Peter had seen another planet up close. He’d wanted so badly to go with them.

But only so he could escape.

He wanted to tell someone down there that he’d been abducted, but his hopes were dashed when Kraglin informed him that he was ‘too young’ for this kind of planet. Peter knew that wasn’t the whole truth. In reality, chances were Yondu knew Peter intended to make a run for it the second his feet touched the ground, the giant blue a-hole…

Crushed by the unfairness of it all, Peter spent the first two cycles on the mostly empty Eclector curled up in the air vents, feeling sick with grief as he tried desperately to avoid the Captain. Whenever he could hear him whistling in the distance, he’d hold his breath and freeze, fearing whatever cruel taunt or chore the man would whip up for him now that there was barely anyone else on board for Yondu to torment.

And he might’ve been able to avoid the man indefinitely if he hadn’t dozed off on the third cycle. He’d fallen asleep close to the grate, which had been quietly placed aside before someone reached in and curled their calloused hand around his ankle. Peter woke to the sensation of being dragged out onto the hallway in one smooth motion, disoriented and drowsy, brain barely registering the blue face that hovered above his own before Yondu hauled him to his feet.

“Come on, boy,” the Captain chuckled, trying to hold him steady by his shoulders. “We’re gonna have a little one-on-one time, you and me.”

Peter stood there frozen in terror as he tried to figure out what a little ‘one-on-one’ time with the Captain would entail. Then he finally found the wits to turn heel and run.

Naturally, Yondu was faster. He caught Peter by the collar of the small leather jacket the ship’s tailor made for him and just about yanked him clear off his feet. Peter’s subsequent struggle was a horrendously brief affair that ended with him hauled up over Yondu’s left shoulder.

“No!” Peter gasped, throat tight with fear. He could already feel the tears welling up in his eyes. He didn’t want to get eaten. “ _Please_.”

“Calm down,” Yondu replied. “You’ll have fun. Trust me.”

The tears sprang free now, rolling up his temples and into his hair as he clung to the back of Yondu’s coat for dear life. There was never anything ‘fun’ to do trapped on ship with a bunch of hardened criminals. All they ever did was drink or sleep or gamble.

Yondu flat out ignored his sobs as he made his way down to the main hanger. They passed Orson and Lell on their way there, both of whom had taken a liking to Peter over the past couple of months.

Curiously, Orson raised his hand to give Peter a little wave. “Enjoy yourself,” he chuckled.

Peter sniffled in confusion.

Upset as he was that the man didn’t try to talk the Captain out of hurting him, Orson’s offhanded comment had a calming effect. But just a little. Peter was still paralyzed with fear as Yondu climbed the ramp of one of the remaining M-ships before finally lowering him to the ground. Peter swayed on his feet as all the blood that had been pooling inside his head redirected itself elsewhere.

Yondu cupped Peter’s chin with one of his hands and turned his face upward, giving him a quick inspection before Peter jerked his head away. “You don’t weigh a thing. You’ve been eating?”

Peter nodded, but only just to shut him up. He _was_ still technically eating, but nowhere near as much as he did on Earth. The food on the Eclector wasn’t tasteless, per se, but it freaked him out that he didn’t know what kind of animal it came from half the time.

Yondu probably didn’t believe him, but ruffled his hair anyway and gestured toward the front of the ship. “Climb up and take a seat. I’m gonna run you through the basics.”   

“The basics of what?” Peter muttered.

“Don’t play dumb.” Yondu ushered him up the ramp with a heavy hand between his shoulder blades, guiding him through the living quarters and toward the ladder that led up to the flight deck. Once there, he gestured Peter toward the front left seat. “Strap yourself in. If I ever hear you flying without the belt, you’ll never ride an M-ship again, you hear?”

Quietly, Peter adjusted the thick buckle over his chest. His legs dangled freely over the edge of the seat because he was too short to reach the foot grates, but thankfully the armrests weren’t too long. He was kind of comfortable.

Yondu began tapping buttons on the screen in front of his chair and radioed the men in the hanger to open one of the bay doors. In less than a minute, they sailed off, the cotton candy planet drifting past them on the left as Yondu steered them toward open space.

“Where are we going?” Peter asked, his curiosity piqued.

Yondu waved his hand toward the vast darkness before them, stars twinkling brightly in the distance. “Just far enough that you don’t hit anything.”

Suddenly Peter realized what kind of ‘fun’ Yondu had been referring to. “I get to _pilot_ this thing?”

“What did you think we were gonna do?” Yondu asked, giving him a weird look. “And this ain’t no _‘thing’_. It’s called the _Milano_.”

Peter eyed the handles at the end of his armrests. It looked as though his seat had the same setup as Yondu’s, meaning either person could potentially drive this perfect little monster.

But Yondu had to be aware that teaching him how to fly was going to counterproductive to keeping Peter’s feet firmly planted where the Ravagers could keep their eyes on him. Therefore, as excited as Peter was, he still had to ask: “Why are you teaching me this?”

“If we’re in a bind, everybody needs to know how to fly an M-ship,” Yondu replied, driving the Milano out a little further from the ship, checking the readings on his screen. “And if you’re any good, I just might let you leave with one of your own someday.”

Peter’s heart leaped up into his throat. Softly, he said. “You’re…going to let me go?”

“If you’re productive,” Yondu quickly stipulated, “and if you don’t try to leave the clan, then yeah.”

“How long do I have to work on the Eclector?”

Yondu flashed him a toothy grin. “Until you’re old enough to drink and fly—legally. And not at the same time, ‘course.”

Peter felt the hope that had been bubbling up inside his chest take a sudden nosedive.

He couldn’t bear to wait that long.

“Chin up,” Yondu said. “Controls are all yours now.”

Peter gripped the handles suddenly, not entirely sure what he was supposed to do. Cautiously, he pulled the left one back and watched as the stars rolled down and around them at a rightward tilt. Slowly, the Eclector came back into sight, small and distant, and then the pleasure planet shortly after.

“How do I move it forward?” Peter asked.

“You’ll figure it out,” Yondu chuckled.

After fiddling for a while with the handles and the joystick and the various buttons on the console, Peter figured out the gist of things. At least well enough that he could fly back toward the Eclector and circle around it a couple of times at a distance. Yondu, surprisingly, let him have free rein of the controls, only interjecting whenever he was about to touch something that could potentially damage the ship.

After about an hour or two of him fooling around with the Milano, Yondu finally switched the primary command back to his controls and flew them to into the hanger. Peter felt heavy inside as they pulled back into his veritable prison, but the joy of flying for the first time in his life hadn’t been completely snuffed out. Playing around with the Milano, he’d felt a little like Han Solo piloting the Millennium Falcon.

Lell was still hanging around after they waltzed off the Milano and into the hanger. The green skinned alien gave him a small smile as he approached. “Not dead, huh?”

“Nope,” Peter replied cheerily.

“Good. I made a bet you wouldn’t crash.”

“How much?”

“500 units.”

Peter wasn’t sure what the unit-to-dollar ratio was, but he knew that was quite a bit. He also knew nobody really made a bet on his performance, simply because Yondu wasn’t the kind of fool who’d take the chance of letting a kid bust up his property.

“He did good,” Yondu said, reaching into one of his hidden coat pockets. He suddenly produced a small curved metal device. “We’ll go out again on my next shift. When we do, you’ll wear this.”

“What it is?” Peter asked as the man tucked it behind his ear.

Whatever it was, it was magnetic—it snapped into place against the small metal plate under his scalp. He was still tender there after the surgery and cried out in alarm, reaching up to pull it off.

Yondu grabbed his hand before he could touch it. “You need to get used to it. That’s your mask.”

Slowly, Yondu lifted Peter’s hand to the device, and showed him where to press it to activate his helmet. It snapped into place over his face, a cool breeze suddenly drifting across his mouth and nose. He inhaled deeply and regretted it almost immediately—he felt like his lungs were on fire.

Peter scrambled for the button and pressed it again, gasping for air as his mask disintegrated before his very eyes. Yondu and Lell watched him quietly for a moment as he bent over double, hacking up his diaphragm.

“If you’re ever gonna get sucked into space, use it.” Lell explained. “Most people take a deep breath before they go, but the air expands outwards and ruptures their lungs. Exhale, turn that on, and then take a whiff of what your helmet produces. It’ll keep you properly pressurized and alive long enough for help to arrive.”

Peter winced at the pain in his chest, but he was still intrigued by this marvelous piece of technology all the same. “You can survive in space without a suit?”

Lell nodded. “You’ll feel a little swollen, but your skin’s tough enough to stand the pressure. You’ll also freeze after a while, but your body can retain its heat for a couple of minutes. If you’re close to a sun though, there’s no atmosphere to protect you from getting burned—even so, it’s nothing you couldn’t heal from if we pick you up promptly.”

“I had no idea...”

“Just remember to exhale,” Yondu repeated solemnly, giving Peter the kind of look that implied he’d seen some nasty stuff happen to people who’d forgotten the cardinal rule. “Long and hard, boy. Clear out your lungs, even if you ain’t got no mask on.”

Peter shuddered at the thought of finding himself on the wrong side of an airlock and suffocating out in the cold vacuum of space. He’d seen Yondu execute insubordinate crew members that way before, just to draw out their agony on the behalf of an overzealous crew. It was a nasty way to get rid of someone, although Peter couldn’t necessarily say he missed any of the men Yondu decided to give the axe. The kind of guys Yondu usually forced to walk the galactic plank were the same people who fought dirty and stole from their comrades.

Of course, Peter had taken to stealing stuff too, but they were little things that eventually made their way back to their rightful owners sooner or later. Like spare socks or trinkets or food— although he usually ate that last one.

Lost in thought, Peter didn’t realize what Yondu was doing until the man sighed and said, “Sorry, son.”

Then he reached behind Peter’s ear and pushed the button again.

Foolishly Peter gasped, got another lungful of that awful air, and started choking again.

He flailed, of course, reaching up to remove the device, but by then Lell had already gotten behind him and wrapped his arms around his torso, keeping Peter’s arms pinned to his sides. Peter screamed, kicking out as Lell lifted him up off the ground, aiming for Yondu until the Captain took a wide step back.

Oh god, it _burned_.

“Gotta get used to it,” Yondu hollered over Peter’s shrill screams. “Terrans can’t breathe on every planet. You’re gonna need it sooner or later.”

Peter could barely speak, it hurt so badly, but eventually he was able to choke out a withering ‘ _I hate you’_ before he went lax in Lell’s arms. He felt lightheaded and weak, like he was about to about to pass out.

“Hate me all you want,” Yondu said, sounding as if from far, far away. “You’re gonna live a nice, long life because of me.”

True as that may be, Peter still muttered another _‘I hate you’_ before his vision faded completely.

He came to lying in his little nest of blankets in the storage closet that had long since become his permanent bedroom, the mask still on. His lungs weren’t burning anymore, but he had a hell of a headache and his throat was sore, so he retracted his mask, tore off the device and then crushed it underfoot. He didn’t care if he got into trouble for destroying it. He was just sick and tired of Yondu doing whatever he damned well felt like to Peter, as though he actually _owned_ him.

Well, Peter Jason Quill belonged to _no one_. _Especially_ not the Ravagers…

Which was pretty much a lie, since he never did escape them before he grew up to be a young, respectable thief, the kind Yondu was proud enough to call a member of his clan. Looking back on his youth now, Peter realizes just how crazy their relationship was. There were plenty of times Peter loathed the other man with every fibre of his being, but Yondu still took it upon himself to make sure Peter could shoot and fly and fight. He also made sure Peter always got his fair share of units from every job, even when he was still too young to spend it on anything meaningful, and eventually gave Peter the Milano despite all those failed escape attempts he made with it as a child. All in all, Yondu might not have had the gentlest hands with which to raise a little boy, but Peter grew up relatively well thanks to him.

Peter feels like shoving that little factoid in Ego’s face, that the man who abducted him from Earth was a _far_ better parental figure than the man who sired him—but then he remembers that Yondu’s efforts were all for naught the moment Peter set foot on this godforsaken planet. He feels like a colossal moron and the biggest flarking burden to his friends and family because of it, but he knows there’s no point dwelling on the matter.

He screwed up.

And now he has to find a way to fix things.

But it’s hard not to focus on the dismal state of his life when he wakes up the following day with his melancholy mood still hanging heavily over his head. He tries to quash the sensation of helplessness by turning over in his bed to check up on Groot. The little guy fell asleep smack dab in the middle of the pillow next to him the night before and is still softly snoring, open mouthed and drooling.

He looks adorable.

Eventually, the tiny terror rolls over onto his side and opens his eyes, yawning long and hard before he flashes Peter a smile. He looks much healthier than he did the day before. Greener. Fresh bits of moss have sprouted on his chest and shoulders.

“I am Groot,” he mumbles around a second yawn.

“Then I’ll get you some water,” Peter replies, shoving down the covers.

It’s then that he catches sight of the shadow moving in the corner of his eye—and of course, that shadow is Ego, lurking silently in the threshold as though waiting for Peter to spot him before intruding further into the room. Peter doesn’t say anything to stop him. Just runs a hand through his matted hair, exasperated by his father’s inability to act like a normal human being despite the fact that he still deems it necessary to look like one.

“You could always knock,” Peter grumbles as he sits up in bed.

“Can you really understand what it’s saying?” Ego asks, completely side-stepping his comment.

Peter doesn’t bother pursuing it. “Rocket understands him better than anyone, but yeah. A little.” He shoves the quilt aside and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. He found a second set of white scrubs in the dresser by the en suite when he came back yesterday to wash up, but he’d kill to have his own clothes back already. “Are you ever going to return my old stuff, or are you holding that hostage too?”

“I destroyed everything you brought with you. I didn’t want to run the risk having one of your other allies track you here.”

He’s not surprised by the other man’s admission, but he’s still bummed out by it. A lot of that gear was stuff Yondu or Rocket had given to him.

“If you’re ready…” Ego gestures to the door, smiling.

Cautiously, Peter reaches back to scoop Groot up into his hands before heading out. He doesn’t flat out run into the atrium today, but he still gets a bit of shock when he sees only three people standing there again, and not anyone from his immediate team this time:

Just Kraglin, Nebula, and Mantis.

“Greetings, friends,” Peter sighs, eyeing his unfortunate guests. He wonders what Ego’s hang-up is about letting him see Yondu and Gamora, although he imagines they’ve probably done something miniscule to personally affront the megalomaniac. “And Nebula.”

Nebula openly glares at him while Mantis averts her gaze downward, subservient in a way that makes Peter’s stomach flip. Kraglin gives him a little wave.

Groot waves back.

“Everyone still alive and well down there?” Peter asks, not knowing what else to say, especially with Nebula staring at him like she wants to tear out his liver and cram it down his throat.

“For the most part,” Kraglin replies. He glances up at the ceiling, openly admiring the architecture. “That woodwork looks very familiar.”

Slowly, Ego strolls into the room, stopping short of the glass partition between Peter and his friends. “I saw something similar when I was on Xandar,” he replies. “I believe the original architect was Dalorian May…How are you familiar with his work?”

Kraglin gives the Celestial a small smile, the kind Peter recognizes as his _‘I’ve stolen from their house/shop/temple-of-worship before’_ look.

Ego figures that out for himself soon enough. He shoots the man a disapproving look. “Oh, but how could I forget. You Ravagers are all _thieves_.”

Kraglin bows his head in mock flattery. “And your boy is one of the best among us.”

“He was your captive,” Ego mutters, as though to correct him.

Peter pretends to be offended, “Hey now—I was _still_ a damn good thief. Stole from Yondu a couple of times too. Nobody else has done that and lived to tell the tale.”

Kraglin grins. “Remember when you took his figurines?”

“He was livid. Thought it was Morg.”

Ego levels him a look and Peter snaps his mouth shut. Even so, he feels good for having riled the man up.

Kraglin doesn’t shut up though. Instead, he looks a little ticked off himself. “What’s your point?” he snaps at Ego. “If we’d given you Quill, there’d be nobody left in the universe.”

Ego shrugs. “Exactly.”

“Exactly,” Kraglin echoes, as though the other man has only supported his point.

Ego blinks in confusion.

“I agree with the thief,” Nebula mutters. “You’re no better than Thanos.”

For some reason, Ego looks terribly insulted by her little remark. He tilts his chin up at her indignantly. “ _Thanos_? My purpose is to create a blank canvas upon which to build perfection. _He_ seeks to cleanse the universe simply for his sick pleasure. Thanos is nothing more than an insect playing at being a god.”

“I don’t disagree,” she drawls, obviously pleased with his analysis. “However, Thanos is one of the Eternals. Like you, he’s a powerful being with too much time on his hands.”

“The Eternals are an experimental race _made_ by the Celestials,” Ego quickly clarifies. “His power is but a spark compared to energy I harness. He isn’t even really immortal.”

As fascinated as Peter is by their mutual verbal smackdown of the angry purple titan, his mind immediately latches onto that little tidbit about the Celestials. “Hold on—I have a very vague memory of you saying you were alone in the universe until I was born.”

“I was,” Ego replies, reaching out to lay a hand on Peter’s shoulder. Peter flinches marginally, but if Ego notices, he does a good job of pretending not to. “I’d heard stories of their work. Before I decided to generate my own spawn, I scoured the universe for evidence of their existence. But all I ever found were bits and pieces of fallen Celestials, like Knowhere…If any of them are still alive, they have no interest in being found.”

“Aren’t they, you know, going to be _pissed_ when they find out you’re trying to wipe everyone out?”

Ego laughs, giving Peter’s shoulder a gentle squeeze before relinquishing his hold. Peter can almost see the Light dancing in his eyes, mischievous and cruel.

Thankfully, Nebula clues him in to what Ego finds so funny. “Have you _never_ heard of the Celestials? They are obsessed with perfection. They’ve wiped out entire civilizations for failing to live up to their standards.”

Ego nods. “You could almost say the desire to purge the universe of its imperfections is in our genes, Peter.”

“Maybe yours,” Peter snaps, taking a wide step back, “but not mine. I love every eff’ed up inch of this raging cesspool.”

“That’s a lie,” Ego says point blank, tilting his head curiously to one side. “And you know it. I showed you my plans for the universe _and_ I told you of the destruction required for its conception. You said it was beautiful.”

…

He did, didn’t he?

But he wasn’t himself then. He was just a conduit for his father’s own sick desires.

“You brainwashed me,” he growls, looking to Mantis for confirmation. “That’s what he does to everyone, right? All those brothers and sisters I never knew—he mesmerized them and then killed them when they didn’t live up to his expectations.”

Mantis, the poor thing, curls her arms protectively across her chest and takes a small step back. “Well…no, actually. He—”

“ _Silence_!” Nebula shrieks, scaring the crap out of everyone as she wheels around on Mantis. She backhands the other woman so hard across the face that Mantis skids a few meters after she’s knocked clean off her feet. “You _snivelling_ waste of oxygen! Would you _crawl_ back to your master on all fours if he asked you to?!”

Peter has a feeling Nebula’s outburst has more to do with Nebula’s own flashbacks of being abducted and delivered to Thanos as a child than Mantis’ feeble answer. Even so, he wants to say something to stop her, but he’s momentarily stunned by the implications that Ego _hadn’t_ brainwashed him—that Ego had, in fact, found the same cold vein of darkness running through Peter’s heart that ran through his own.

Involuntarily, Peter shudders.

Thankfully, Kraglin was always quick to respond in a fight, having calmly walked up behind Nebula and hooked his foot around her left ankle as she attempted to close in on Mantis for another blow. She trips, spilling forward rather inelegantly onto the mosaic floor, where she’s subsequently pinned down by the tendrils of light and dirt that encircle her waist.

“Don’t hurt her!” Peter cries, finally shaken from his stupor.

“I won’t,” Ego replies, seemingly unconcerned as he opens a sizeable hole in the ground beneath her. It swallows her whole half a second before Kraglin is dragged in after her, shouting out in alarm before the floor seals itself seamlessly above him.

Peter’s never going to get over how creepy that whole things is.

“Must your friends always behave like children?” Ego sighs once everything is said and done.

“Nebula’s not a ‘friend’, per se, but if you really knew Thanos, you’d understand where she’s coming from.”

Ego turns to look at him, brow furrowed in mild curiosity. “Tell me, Peter— _am_ I like Thanos?”

 _No_ , Peter thinks immediately, and he’s not even surprised with how easily that answer comes to him. Thanos is loud and large and cruel to the point of almost perfecting the art.

Ego was all those things, but carefully wrapped up under a charming façade, one that’s good enough to fool even himself.

Slowly, Peter shakes his head.

Pacified by his answer, Ego reaches forward to touch the glass partition. It shatters exactly as it did the last time, turning to water as it touches the ground. Then he steps forward, approaching Mantis’ quivering form where she’s still seated on the ground, face buried in her hands.

She doesn’t look up when Ego stops before her, and Ego says nothing to draw her attention. Feeling uneasy with the whole situation, Peter steps around his father to offer the poor woman a hand. “Are you alright?” he asks.

Sniffling, she finally looks up at them. Her face is puffy and red from crying and there’s a dribble of blood running down from her nose. She’s lucky Nebula didn’t get a second hit in before Kraglin intervened. Gamora’s told him even she has a hard time fending off her sister when Nebula’s revving to have a go at someone.

“I…I think so,” she mumbles as she reaches out to take the proffered hand. Groot coos softly at her from his little perch in Peter’s other hand. She flashes the little guy a weak smile as she rises to her feet.

“Peter,” Ego says with the slightest infliction of a question.

Peter knows that tone of voice well. His mom used to say his name like that whenever she was about to ask him something she already knew the answer to, like why his knees were covered in dirt or what was he hiding in his pocket.

His uneasy feeling intensifies as he turns to look at Ego, keeping his hand wrapped firmly around his companion’s.

Now that he has Peter’s full attention, Ego continues. “I’m going to ask you something and I want you to be frank with me.”

Cautiously, Peter nods.

“Excellent.” Ego takes a measured step forward. “What do you really think of the Expansion?”

He knows there’s no use outright lying to the man. Ego’s already heard his thoughts on the matter. He’s also always been the kind of guy that can’t help but run his mouth when he feels particularly strong about something.

And he sure as hell feels strongly about this.

“I think,” he starts slowly, “that it’s the worst kind of purpose you could’ve dreamt up for yourself. You spent, what, _millions_ of years miserable and alone, only to decide that that kind of existence is somehow preferable to putting a little effort into really getting to know anyone? _That’s_ childish.”

Ego nods, as though he hadn’t expected anything different. Then he turns to Mantis. “Have you learned your lesson?”

She shrinks back in fear, but still nods her head.

“Good.” He glances back at Peter. “Prove it.”

It takes Peter an embarrassing long moment to realize what’s going on, but by the time he realizes he’s still holding Mantis’ hand, she’s already whispered something into his ear, antennae glowing as she works her magic. He feels lightheaded all of a sudden. And warm.

And compliant.

Ego slowly closes the gap between them and reaches up tap Peter’s forehead with his index finger. Obediently, Peter doesn’t move to stop him, just lets the cold blue spool of stars and repurposed planets roll past his eyes as his father shares the concept of his Expansion with Peter once again.

And honestly?

It really is something beautiful...

~*~*~*~

Ego feels an odd sort of tranquility wash over him as his son’s eyes darken and change. Ego can see the new universe reflected in them, elegant and precise, purified of all parasitic life. Why is it no one else can understand the great service he is doing in the name of Creation?

Ego takes this moment to admire his great gift to the universe. Peter looks so much better when he allows himself to be at ease, taking slow, even breathes, even as the little twig tugs anxiously at his sleeve. Ego tries to shoo the thing away with his hand, hoping Peter will drop it, but it clambers like some strange monkey across Peter’s shirt before vaulting itself onto Mantis. Surprised, the woman catches the small creature in her arms and backs away slowly, retreating to the far corner of the atrium as Ego deals with his child.

Humming softly to himself, Ego reaches up to brush the jut of Peter’s cheek with his fingertips before trailing them back toward the boy’s ear. He touches a gently curled lock of hair and marvels at its softness, then traces his fingers down the lean cut of the boy’s throat. He can see a little of Meredith in his boy, just enough to bring back only his fondest memories of her. He is so undeniably happy that Peter turned out to be his Celestial spawn.

Meredith deserved to be the mother of a god.

He knows he should continue with his plan now, drain Peter a little to fuel the Expansion on just a planet or two, but he knows he wouldn’t get far with it today. He needs to be patient. Once Peter learns how to fully harness his powers, they can make short work of remaking the universe together.

“Do you see Earth?” he asks as he watches the glorious future flicker across Peter’s eyes.

“Yes,” his boy says softly.

“Describe it to me.”

“It’s been…” Peter pauses as he searches for the appropriate word, “…cleansed.”

 _‘There it is,’_ Ego thinks to himself. That’s the Celestial in Peter speaking now, the one that sees reason.

“That’s a curious word for it,” Ego continues. “What has it been cleansed of?”

“Terrans.”

“And in the grand scheme of things, how significant are the Terrans?”

Peter is quiet as he contemplates Ego’s question. Then he says, “Not very significant at all.”

“ _Exactly_.” Ego curls his hand around the back of Peter’s neck, stroking his thumb against the soft tufts of his hair there. “After the Expansion comes to pass and Earth is purified, you can remake it however you see fit.”

Ego pulls Peter’s forward so that he can kiss him gently above his brow. He wants to chase away the darkness inside his boy’s mind and fill it with visions of Light and Purity, but this is a journey Peter needs to make on his own. The biological drive to fulfill their greater purpose is there inside him. Peter just needs a little time and patience to recognize it for himself.

“Good,” Ego says as he finally releases the boy. “Now, I want you to forget we had this discussion. Eat and drink your fill, then continue with yesterday’s exercise.”

Without having to be asked, Mantis approaches them, holding the slumbering form of the little twig. She’s already put it to sleep in an attempt to make its last few memories fuzzy. With any luck, it won’t remember anything at all.

Peter takes the small creature from her quietly and wanders past Ego toward the balcony. As Ego’s influence on him wears off, he’ll probably succumb to his fatigue and lie down under a tree somewhere to rest. He’ll likely remember seeing his companions this morning, but nothing much beyond that.

Once Peter is gone, Ego turns to Mantis and says, “What happened to you?”

Ashamed, she averts her gaze.

“Thousands of children and not _once_ did you oppose me,” he mutters. “But the second Peter shows up, you lose your mind. I demand an answer.”

“I-I…” she curls her arms across her chest, shrinking back from him in fear and disgrace. She’s always been such a skittish little thing, but she looks completely ruined by her recent incarceration underground. “I touched his companion, Drax. He was mourning the loss of his daughter. The sensation was…unlike anything I’ve felt before.”

 _-Unlike anything I’ve felt **from** **you** before-_ is what Ego thinks she means to say, but Mantis has enough sense not to say as much aloud. So, Ego voices her thoughts for her: “You came to the rather hasty conclusion that my lack of emotional turmoil over killing my other children was…abnormal?”

Wide-eyed and trembling, she just stands there and stares at him. To deny him would be an outright lie, the kind that would fool neither of them.

“Believe what you will, _not_ all children are loved equally.” He gestures vaguely toward the ground, where his other prisoners are currently stewing in their misery. “That man down there—Captain Udonta? His parents sold him into slavery. Some species even kill their young for food. By _far_ , I have always been a much better father.”

Chastised, she nods.

“Come here,” he says.

She hesitates, as though bracing herself for another blow. But as soon as Ego holds his hand out to her, she eases her stance and cautiously approaches

She could put him to sleep again, but since there’s no way for her to get off the planet, he feels secure in letting her touch him. Once she takes his hand, he says, “Tell me how I feel for Peter.”

Mantis swallows hard and closes her eyes. She trembles as his emotions wash over her.

Ego just relaxes and thinks of Peter.

Once she’s gotten a good reading on him, she withdraws her hand and takes a slow, deep breath, as though nothing could’ve prepared her for what she had seen. “What you feel for him is…very different.”

“Of course.” That doesn’t really surprise him.

“You want his respect,” she elaborates. “His love…You want him to stay with you forever.”

“And he will.”

She folds her hands together and drops her gaze, nodding.

He scrutinizes her familiar posture and then asks, “What else did you see?”

Her antenna quiver, but thankfully she isn’t foolish enough to keep her thoughts a secret from him. “You are also…jealous.”

Ego barks out a laugh that rings throughout the atrium like a clap of thunder. Him? _Jealous_? “What reason do I have to be envious of Peter?”

“I did not say you were envious of him,” she clarifies quietly.

Ego squints at her in confusion, but then slowly his confusion turns to bitterness as he finally understands her meaning. “Of who then? You mean Udonta? His _friends_? They’ll all die sooner or later, with or without my intervention. All that he loves will inevitably fall with the passing of time.”

“He will still love them, even after they are gone.”

“Not if he doesn’t remember them.”

Mantis looks up at him sharply.

Ego ignores her shocked expression, mood soured by her poor interpretation of his emotions. He thought she would’ve learned to master her empathetic abilities by now. How disappointing.

All the same, the influence she has over other people is still a boon to him, and so he doesn’t drag her back to her cell. He’s been keeping an eye on her these past few cycles. He knows she’s been moping this entire time, burdened by the guilt of betraying the man who raised her. She’s always been weak like that.

Ego huffs out an exasperated sigh, tugging irritably on the hairs of his beard with one hand. Like most women, yelling at Mantis isn’t going to do him any favors. She responds poorly to violence.

Once he’s had a moment to compose himself, he glances back at her. She waits anxiously for him to speak.

“I have no desire to put you back down there,” he finally says, delivering his verdict. “But this is your only warning, Mantis. Betray me again and you’ll join the pile of bones at my core.”

Almost imperceptibly, she nods.

He gives her a dismissive wave of his hand. “Return to your quarters. Stay there until I summon you.”

Falling back into her old habits, Mantis bows her head and scurries away, still cradling her arms across her chest like a wounded animal.

Ego focuses his attention fully on her for a moment, feeling the gentle patter of her footsteps as she retreats to her old room. He waits until she arrives at her destination before he strolls out of the atrium and onto the balcony where Peter is finishing his breakfast, taking a bite of fresh fruit as his bizarre pet naps against his shoulder. Peter himself looks fatigued. The stars are still swirling in his eyes, but Ego can see the mortal side of his son fighting to regain control. Soon, the vision will fade and Peter will forget they fought at all this morning.

Ego squeezes the boy’s shoulder before he retreats to one side of the balcony, settling into one of the wicker benches. As he watches his son, he feels at peace again.

He doesn’t recall having ever felt this content before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: _{shakes his head}_ That Ego...


	6. Cruelty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Sorry for the delay, guys. I just got back from Mexico a couple of days ago. Didn't have my computer.
> 
> An important note: I channeled a little of the young Peter from the animated show into this chapter's flashback. Having said that, I'm just going to warn you that there's a reference to the torture of a minor character. Other than that, everything's going to be the same flavor as usual.

Peter knows something is off.

Leaves shouldn’t look this withered and grey from the get-go.

In fact, he’s pretty sure his poor imitation of a plant still isn’t a plant at all, just a more elaborate model of dirt. Prodding it with his finger confirms his suspicions. The dry soil crumbles at his touch, leaving him with nothing more a small pile of dashed hopes.

Peter closes his eyes, throws his head back, and resists the urge to scream.

He’s been out here for god-only-knows how many hours already. He woke up sometime around midday under a tree, feeling groggy and confused, with Groot sound asleep on his chest. He set the little guy down in the shade, careful not to wake him, and then set to work continuing his task from yesterday: creating life from scratch.

Peter ‘knows’ how to create life, but only in the more traditional, _classy_ sense. Not that he’s ever really tried to make another lifeform before. Moron that he was as a young adult, he never once touched a girl without having the right kind of protection on hand. None of the Ravagers had ever given him ‘the Talk’, besides that one time Kraglin drunkenly informed him off all the venereal diseases humanoid species could contract in space, but even an overly excitedly and naïve Peter intuitively knew he couldn’t handle the responsibility of being a father. He figures he could probably manage fatherhood now, but considering the taint in his blood, the innate desire to bring another person into existence has been sufficiently quashed. He can’t stomach the thought of Ego getting his hands on the kid.

His old man would either bend them to his will or kill them.

Peter isn’t used to being such a downer. At least, not for days on end, barring that one time he’d been abducted by aliens as a child. He thinks the last time he felt at ease was probably when he persuaded Gamora to dance with him…

If she knew how sappy he was feeling about her right now, she’d probably dislocate his jaw with the butt end of her sword. Technically, she already knew he was attracted to her, but Peter hadn’t said the magic words yet to transform this horribly unspoken beast into a moderately tameable one. It probably wouldn’t change the way she felt about him, but Peter’s determined to put an end to this fickle business once they get the hell out of dodge, consequences bedamned.

Lost as he is in thought, he doesn’t notice Mantis until she’s standing right in front of him. She doesn’t exactly announce herself, but he still feels stupid for letting his guard down.

Given the recent gaps in his memory, he wonders if his brain isn’t starting to call it quits on him.

“Are you thirsty?” she asks, holding out a small leather flask. She nods over his shoulder, toward the woods. “There’s a stream nearby. I collected some water for you.”

Rising from the ground, Peter brushes the dirt off his knees and graciously takes the proffered flask. After a swig, he lowers it and says, “How’re you feeling?”

She raises her hand as though to touch her face, but drops it again quickly. She’s got one hell of a bruise blossoming under her right eye and across the bridge of her nose. Peter can only imagine how painful it must’ve been to take a direct headshot from Nebula.

“I’m alright,” she lies. Thanks to the swelling, she sounds wonderfully congested to boot.

Peter shrugs and takes another swig of water. If she doesn’t want to talk about it, he isn’t going to force her. “Did Ego send you to fetch me?”

“No. He sent me to see if there was anything you required. You are more than welcome to continue working, if you’d like.”

Peter’s silently grateful that his father didn’t decide to check up on him in person. He has no doubt the man is watching them, but it’s easier to pretend the concept of privacy still exists on this planet when Ego’s smug face isn’t hovering in his periphery.

“I think I could use a break,” he says, nodding toward the shade. Groot is awake now and rolling around in the grass, humming gleefully to himself. Peter doesn’t recognize the tune. “Care to join me?”

The ghost of a smile graces her lips, as though the offer of company is a rare treat. “Oh yes, please.”

He feels a small pang in his chest as he contemplates all the social niceties Ego deprived her of by keeping her a prisoner here, but Peter keeps his thoughts to himself as they join his younger companion on the grass. Groot pauses in his merriment to wave at them and then continues rolling around.

Settling down on the ground beside him, Mantis gives the little guy a curious look. “What is he doing?”

Peter shrugs. “Playing.”

“…When I was little, I would weave or sew in my spare time.”

“Oh yeah?” It never occurred to him that Mantis would’ve had to entertain herself as a child. But considering what happened to Peter siblings, perhaps it was for the best that Ego spent as little time with her as humanly possible. “What did you make?”

“Blankets or tapestries.” She smiles faintly again. “And dresses. I _love_ dresses. They are more comfortable than trousers.”

“I can’t speak from experience, but I imagine you’re right.”

“What did you do for entertainment as a child?”

Her question catches him off guard, mostly because his brain is firmly divided on where he truly spent his ‘childhood’. He clears his throat. “Well…when I was still on Earth, I’d play sports with my friends or listen to music with my mom. After the Ravagers took me, I spent more time working than playing. Whenever I had a break, I’d mostly just laze around and listen to music… Or build stuff. The guys would give me odds and ends from old equipment to fiddle with.”

Mantis tilts her head curiously to one side. “What kind of ‘stuff’?”

He clears his throat again. “Oh, just…stuff.”

Before Mantis can launch into a rather uncomfortable line of questioning concerning his childhood as an intergalactic prisoner, Peter decides to pursue one of his own: “What were my siblings like?”

He regrets asking her almost as soon as the words leave his mouth though, given the way her already bruised face crumples miserably.

Just as he’s about to apologize for his insensitivity, she says, “They were lovely…All of them.”

Peter’s chest tightens. He’d never met any of them, of course, so he can’t explain the arbitrary sense of attachment he has for them, but he supposes that’s biology for you. Just about everyone was made to love. “How many of them did you know?”

She sighs. “Many…Fifty, perhaps? Of all ages. You are not the oldest, by far.”

This surprises him. It’s something of a small comfort knowing it wasn’t always children that were lead to the slaughter, that some of his siblings had lived fuller lives than others. It still doesn’t excuse what Ego did to them, but he likes to imagine that maybe one or two of them were old enough and wise enough to flip the old man the bird before meeting their metaphorical maker.

“Why did Ego kill them?” is his next loaded question. He doesn’t care if the man is eavesdropping anymore. He has a sudden hankering for the bitter truth.

“I don’t believe he wanted them to die,” she replies. “When they could not manipulate the Light themselves, he would try to connect them to it directly. That is what killed them.”

“So, if I hadn’t been able to summon up the Light on my own, I would’ve…” Peter waves his hand out in front of himself vaguely. He’s sure he isn’t the first of Ego’s children to be impaled on a tendril of light, but he can’t even begin to image what would happen to a normal person who was forced to connect with it. Did it immediately suck them lifeless, or did they burn up slowly like meteors passing through the atmosphere?

Or more importantly—was it as painful for them as it was for him?

Solemnly, Mantis nods. “But Ego was very confident you would survive once he heard about your use of the Infinity Stone. The stones belong to the Celestials. They are your birthright.”

Peter wonders if she was instructed to regurgitate Ego’s sales pitch, but he doesn’t bother to call her out on it. He might be born of a Celestial, but he has no desire to complete their grand scheme for the universe.

She must be getting better at reading faces, because Mantis takes one look at his and quickly averts her eyes in shame. “I apologize. I know you are very proud of your human heritage.”

“It’s…okay, Mantis.” Technically, he isn’t ‘proud’ of being a Terran so much as he feels a little clingier now to the half of his identity that has absolutely nothing to do with Ego. “I just think maybe the reason there are so few Celestials kicking around is because, well… _they’re_ the ones that shouldn’t exist.”

Mantis frowns in contemplation. “I don’t know if they _shouldn’t_ exist…but if there were more of you, that would lead to a power struggle perhaps? Ego never seems concerned. He has said before that none of his other offspring are Celestials.”

“Well, yeah, otherwise I figure he wouldn’t have killed them all.”

She blinks at him in confusion. “But he hasn’t killed them all.”

It takes a second for her words to sink in. When they finally do, they send his mind reeling in the most psychedelic way, fainting speckles of color and light dances across his vision. He could very well pass out from the shock of that single statement alone. “I…have _living_ siblings?”

“Of course,” she replies hesitantly, trying on an awkward smile before dropping it. He can tell she’s having trouble determining whether he’s happy or outraged, so he flashes her an easy grin, one which brightens her own mood considerably. “Oh, you have _many_! Some younger, some older! They still live on their home planets.”

“Is that because Ego couldn’t convince anyone to deliver them to him?”

“Yes. And no. He told me he narrowed down his search for his progeny shortly after you were born.”

“Why?”

Absently, she runs her hands down the fabric covering her thighs, smoothing it out as her mind takes a stroll down memory lane. “He said…he said he felt something out there in the universe when you were conceived. But many of his mates were pregnant or had already given birth at that time, so he could not pinpoint the source. You became a blinding light after the battle on Xandar. And when you finally came here, he could tell that there was nothing else like you _out there_ anymore. You are his only Celestial child.”

The first fun fact that Peter takes away from her little narrative is that none of his other siblings have to die now in order for Ego to complete his bizarre quest for a second power source. The second fun fact is that Peter potentially has countless family members scattered throughout the universe, just waiting for him to annoy the mother-loving flark out of them.

If he ever gets the chance.

The not-so-fun fact is that he suddenly has so much more to lose if Ego wins. All of Ego’s ‘failed’ offspring could still potentially perish if the Expansion succeeds, each of them doomed to die at their father’s hand one way or another.

Peter suddenly feels hot and cold all at once, like he’s got a fever coming on. Impulsively, he takes another swig of water.

He really needs to get the hell off this planet.

“You look unwell,” Mantis says hesitantly. “Was it something I said?”

“No,” he says. Then something else occurs to him. “Well, yes. Maybe.”

She blinks her big black eyes at him innocently. She’s horribly adorable for a fully-grown woman.

“I just realized something,” he continues, reaching over to take one of her hands into his own. It’s a silly notion, really, but he thinks she would appreciate it. “Since Ego raised you, he’s kind of like a father to you, isn’t he?”

Timidly, she looks down at her lap, still absently smoothing out the fabric of her trousers with her free hand. “I am not of his blood.”

“Whatever. On Earth, people raise children they aren’t related to all the time. It’s not that uncommon. What I’m trying to say is, _we’re_ kind of connected through Ego, yeah? So that makes us siblings too.”

Mantis whips her head up to look at him suddenly, barely blinking. The tips of her antenna begin to glow a soft rosy pink.

For a moment, he wonders if she’s still breathing.

“Uh,” Peter says, after the silence between them stretches far beyond the point of comfort. “Are you okay?”

“ _Siblings_?” she breathes, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. “I-I’m…I’m your _sister_?”

“Exactly.”

She smiles again and this time it looks like the most genuine thing in the whole goddamn world, modeled from pure, unbridled joy by the hands of Eutychia herself. Mantis squeezes him again, a little harder this time, but nowhere near enough to hurt. Just kind of desperate, like she’s used to having someone pull the rug out from under her feet just as she’s about rode a jubilant high. “And you— _you_ are my brother?”

“Pretty much.”

She hiccups and raises her free hand to cover her mouth. Peter realizes she’s crying, so he squeezes her hand back. “I’m sorry—I did _not_ mean to trigger the water works.”

“ _I’m okay_ ,” she chokes. She releases his hand to wipe her tears away, dabbing carefully around her bruise. “ _You are too good to me_.”

“Nah,” he grins, relaxing. “I always wanted a little sister…Just imagine all the mayhem we could accomplish together.”

He’s not actually sure which one of them is older, but given Mantis’s naivety, he figures he might as well be the older sibling.

“ _Together_ ,” she sobs, as though it were a sacred word.

“Absolutely.”

“What d-does a sister do?” she hiccups, sounding both hopeful and confused.

What an odd question. “You mean obligation-wise? I’ve never lived by any rules, and I’ve got none for you…Well, that isn’t true. There is _one_ thing you should probably do.”

She sits up a little straighter, as though having a boundary by which she can define herself in this make-shift family of theirs has given her the keys to succeed in her new role. She reminds him very much of Dolly Thompson from the second grade in that moment, a clever little cookie who sat beside him during the afternoon period. Always had perfect posture. And tightly braided piggy-tails. The personification of a Teacher’s Pet, really, but a good friend all the same.

Finally, he says, “If you’re hurt, you come to me. It doesn’t matter if you fall and skin your knees or if someone cusses you out. You have any problems whatsoever, I’m your man.”

She sniffles and stares at him quietly for moment. “What would you do then?”

“Depends on the situation: listen, lend you a shoulder to cry on, or hurt the hurtful things right on back, at least to the best of my abilities. That’s my solemn promise to you.”

Mantis smiles again, dark eyes crinkled with delight. She thrusts her right hand out to him suddenly and says. “I agree with this deal.”

It feels kind of awkward making this whole family business thing official with that kind of gesture, but he shakes her hand anyway. If he’d been eight years old and back on Earth, he would’ve offered her a hug instead. He’ll wait until she’s more socially mature before he tries anything like that though. He doesn’t want to get slapped for all the wrong reasons.

“By the way,” he says, realizing he should probably clarify something about their arrangement before she overthinks things, “this deal can’t be broken. We’re siblings for life, comprendre?”

She nods excitedly, rubbing away a lingering tear with the back of her hand. “For life,” she echoes.

“Great.” He takes another sip of water and glances over at Groot, who is now hopping excitedly around his clay friend Stanley, humming his own tune again. His behavior reminds Peter of something oddly tribal, and he suddenly wonders if this is the inner workings of Groot’s own heritage or if this is just the way all young children behave once they’ve found their love of music.

Peter realizes he should probably get back to work, but just thinking the word ‘heritage’ turns him off the idea of using the Light again any time soon. So, he glances back at Mantis and says, “I guess since we’re officially siblings now, I should teach you our secret handshake.”

Her antennae perk up comically in delight. “Our secret _handshake_?”

“Yessiree,” he says, holding out his hand.

Smirking—which is an entirely new look on her, and perhaps the most confident one he’s seen grace her lips yet—she slips her own right hand delicately into his open palm.

And then together they spend the next hour or so inventing stupid handshakes.

~*~*~*~

For once in the millions of years since his own conception, Ego is hurt in a way that is beyond description.

It’s a potent ache that spans his diaphragm, wedged uncomfortably between his artificial heart and stomach. It feels warm and weighty and expands when he inhales. Sometimes it settles a little and he thinks it’s almost gone, but then it flares to life again as soon as he lets his mind wander, suggesting to him that he cannot simply wait the pain out. It’s a foreign creature that’s here to stay.

And that…that is unacceptable.

It’s late in the day and Peter has already returned to his room with his pet, humming together as they sit out on the balcony to watch the sun set. Ego locks the doors to the boy’s chambers with his mind and then strolls slowly through his darkened halls, soft footfalls echoing up into the vast dome ceilings above, until he reaches the opposite wing. He stops there to admire one of the wall murals, a glass mosaic of brilliant reds and oranges that depict a volcano he once saw on another planet. He hums the same tune on Peter’s mind as he waits for Mantis to return.

She is also humming, but she chokes on the song once she rounds the corner and sees him standing there. Obediently, she crosses her hands in front of her waist and says, “You did not call for me, so…so I remained with Peter.”

“Peter,” Ego echoes softly, still admiring the wall mural. “Your ‘brother’…”

The mural is not entirely red and orange. The sky is completely black, save for a small speck of white far up in the left-hand corner. At a glance, one might assume it’s the moon, but the sky is dark because of the ash and soot, blocking out the light of all celestial bodies. This speck is the bird he had once seen circling the volcano, larger than a man and just as mean.

The natives of this world called these majestic beasts _Co’lola_ , the ‘kin _-_ slayers’, for the largest bird born in a clutch would often eat its siblings once its claws were sharp enough. Or, occasionally, a full-grown adult might eat its own young. Sustenance was hard to find in these barren lands, although a well-fed _Co’lola_ might still feast on its family. And the more they ate, the larger the grew, making fine war-steads for the tribal people who worshipped them.

Ego has many murals reminding him of the various flavors of murder in the universe, just as a reminder that what he is doing is nothing unusual or cruel. In fact, he is kinder in his execution than most species.

His children don’t often know they’re dead until they touch the Light.

Once it becomes clear to her that Ego has nothing else to say, Mantis clears her throat. “You…you gave me no further instruction than to speak with him. I did not want to disagree with him.”

He turns to look at her then. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

She blinks at him in confusion.

Really, she hasn’t. Ego’s been having a difficult time getting a good reading on his son behind the scenes both because the twig thing doesn’t speak any language Ego understands and because it’s childlike mind isn’t capable of having any kind of _intellectual_ conversation with Peter. Mantis, wallflower that she is, isn’t much of a step up from ‘Groot’, but she speaks fluently and she’s easy bait for someone with a past like Peter’s. She’s a dark-eyed damsel in distress, the boy’s usual cup of tea.

Ego has no idea where the hell this whole ‘ _sibling’_ nonsense came from.

Thinking of it stirs up that ache again. He rubs his chest where it hurts and says, “He’s just like me, isn’t he?”

Mantis blinks again in confusion. “He…yes, he looks just like you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he sighs. “It’s his charm. His cunning. If you put a pretty girl in front of him, he knows just what to say to send her heart soaring…Isn’t that right, Mantis?”

She raises a hand to touch the side of her face gently. “I’m…pretty?”

That’s not the message he was trying to convey to her, but she’s always been an odd one. He supposes that might be his fault “Well, yes, but the _point_ is he’s just like his old man. Just as manipulative. Just as _cruel_ …”

“No,” she says, so softly that he almost doesn’t catch it.

He frowns. “Excuse me?”

She swallows hard enough that he can practically hear the bile sliding down her throat. “He’s not cruel. He…he offered to protect me for nothing in exchange.”

“Because you’re his ‘pseudo-family’?” he chuckles, but that damn ache is back again, summoned by the thought that his son would sooner invite a complete stranger into his heart than his own flesh and blood. “He spent the first few minutes of your conversation expressing how important his ‘siblings’ were to him and then he extended that invitation to you to gain your trust. As soon as he knew you were hooked, he quite explicitly asked you to keep him up to date on anything that happened to you, because he wants _information_ , my dear...He wants you to be his messenger mule.”

Slowly, Mantis crosses her arms, her default posture when she’s feeling insecure. Ego thinks he’s finally put this argument to bed when she does that, but then she surprises him by saying, “He saved everyone on Xandar. He’s been bargaining with you to protect his friends. I do not believe he’s cruel…”

Ego tilts his head back in surprise. Trust the girl to get a little backbone at the worst imaginable moment. It takes him a second to come up with a proper rebut. “He was a criminal for many years before that, Mantis. He lived with a clan who were as close to him as any family he could ever hope for and yet he betrayed them all in the end. Believe me, he _can_ be cruel.”

There’s the hint of a question in her eyes now and he knows that this is his chance to sway her.

He holds his hand out, palm down, and says, “Let me show you.”

~*~*~*~

Kraglin’s parents were firm believers of the Old Faith:

Life, death, rebirth…

Rinse and repeat.

He’s seen variations of the same religion throughout his travels, and though he doesn’t prescribe to any particular sect himself, he’s never had any problem believing in the old creed. Life, death, and rebirth. Over and over again. A circle without end.

Kind of tedious when you stopped to think about it.

The funniest thing about the Old Faith though is that a person could come back as anyone or any _thing_ , regardless of how they acted in the previous life. Of course, that wasn’t exactly the best incentive for convincing your followers to be good people, so the leaders of the faith were careful to point out that any evils a person committed in this life might be revisited on them in the next. Kraglin didn’t much mind the thought of someone robbing him blind when he was reborn though, so long as they did it with as much class and cunning as he robbed others, and so he never gave the Old Faith much thought in his adult life.

Until now.

What gets him into thinking about it again is the grueling trip from prison cell to surface, squeezed through all the crooks and crannies of the earth as he’s propelled violently forward by a force unseen. He has neither the time nor the space to breathe, eye shut tight against the grit. His bones and joints creak under the immense pressure.

He worries that he might not break surface before he has to open his mouth and scream.

This, he imagines, is what the transition from death to rebirth must feel like.

Just as he’s convinced his skull is about to cave in, the earth parts above him and spits him out.

The light around him is blinding, but the air is sweet and he drinks it in with one long gasping breath. And then another, until the world stops spinning and he can convince his limbs to stop shaking long enough for him to push himself upright.

Not surprisingly, the old bastard is standing before him. Also not surprisingly, his servant girl is trembling beside the prick, eyes downcast submissively.

“Hi,” Kraglin says to her before he coughs violently into his fist. He’s got dirt stuck all the way in the back of his throat.

Marginally, she smiles.

Ego gives a sigh of long-suffering and says, “If I remember correctly, you’ve been a part of Udonta’s crew since I first hired him.”

“A lot longer than that,” he mutters. He started off as a member of Stakar’s crew, back when the old man was rearing Yondu to run his own ship. Kraglin liked the Centurian enough that he transferred over to the Eclector when Yondu finally became a Captain.

Ego flings his hand dismissively to one side. “What I mean is you’ve known Peter practically all his life as a Ravager.”

Kraglin doesn’t need to do or say anything to confirm that, so he doesn’t. In fact, he doesn’t feel like moving so much as a muscle in any way that could be interpreted as a response by this asshole. He just spits out the grit that’s stuck between his teeth and waits for the earth to swallow him whole again.

Ego glances over at the girl.

Mantis smooths down the front of her suit nervously and walks over to Kraglin. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she says meekly.

“No offense, miss, but I doubt you ever could.”

She shrugs, as though this is a not news to her.

Then her dainty little fingers graze the back of his hand and she says, “You want to answer our questions...”

His father used to say that any man could be made to kneel at the right woman’s touch, and Kraglin’s never felt the truth of that statement so much as he does now. He feels as pleasant as a cold drink after a long day’s work and about as twice as agreeable. He’d spill his whole life story to them if they asked.

“Are you ready to cooperate?” Ego asks.

Momentarily, Kraglin gets a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. The sensation passes almost immediately. “What do you want to know?”

The old man smiles. “I want you to tell me a of a time when Peter demonstrated a level of cruelty beyond anything you would expect from a normal man or child.”

“Cruelty?” Kraglin asks, more so to taste the word than to clarify the question. Peter was a damn good thief and a talented con-man, but he wasn’t ever really ‘cruel’, per se. At least, not by Ravager standards.

Although…

Kraglin grunts thoughtfully as he rubs the back of his neck. Truth be told, there’s one memory that stands out in his mind, but it happened ages ago, back on the desert planet of Naturi.

He remembers leaning against the steel wall of one of their old warehouses, lurking in the shadows, eyes and mouth stinging from the hot air. It was like oven in there, his face and neck beaded with sweat, but he was just too happy to give a damn about the heat. In fact, he was downright _giddy_ , that’s what he was, because today was the day that a grievous wrong was going to be set to rights and he was fortunate enough to witness this terrible justice first hand.

In the centre of the room was a small pit, only wide enough to comfortably fit five or six men. It was deep enough to keep its sole occupant trapped inside though, that unfortunate bastard being none other than a Krylorian named Barm. He was feebly calling out for help between muffled sobs, being at least somewhat resigned to his fate if still a little hopeful that the eyes of fortune would soon turn on him favorably.

After a moment, a small figure revealed itself behind a stack of crates on the far side of the room. They quietly made their way past the bloodied tiles on the floor and the broken bits of wire and string, stopping only at the very edge of the pit before pulling back their hood.

Kraglin can’t remember if Peter was twelve or thirteen then, but he was most certainly still just a child. Much taller than he’d been when the nabbed him, although nowhere near as tall as he would eventually become. At this tender age, Peter was oddly lean and graceful, still small enough to fit into tight spaces but quicker now on his feet, all of his baby fat having evaporated with his innocence. He was a good person to have working the inside jobs by then. He was clever.

 _Efficient_.

Running a hand through the sweat-slick strands of his hair, Peter laughed a little and said, “Hotter than hell in here, ain’t it?”

Barm’s moaning ceased almost immediately. Once he realized he wasn’t hallucinating, the trapped man said, “Tell me you have some rope or water, kid. Either one will do.”

“I have both,” Peter replied, unstrapping the flask at his hip. He unscrewed the lid and took a long pull of water.

“Please, boy…” the man sobbed. “I’ve been trapped down here for days. My leg is broken. My equipment’s stuck to the goddamn roof.”

Kraglin glanced up at said roof. Sure enough, he could see a set of blasters, a can of water, and a broken communicator up there, held in place by a gravity mine.

“I know.” Screwing the lid back on the flask, Peter returned it to his hip.

There was an audible thump in the bottom of the pit, not doubt the sound of Barm’s fist slamming into the wall. “If you know, then _help_ _me_!”

“Now _why_ would I do a thing like that?” Peter laughed. It was light and mellifluous, just the way a child’s should be. Made the whole situation a little chilling, to be honest. “Do you know how long it took me to design this trap? Or how long it took to set the whole thing up—not _only_ here, but at half of the other storage locations as well? This little project has been my life for the past year and a half, so let me bask in the glory of finally catching someone for just a moment.”

There was a brief pause as Peter basked in said moment. Meanwhile, the gears turned inside Barm’s head. Eventually, he asked, “Did a guy named Udonta put you up to this, kid?”

“This _is_ one of his warehouses, is it not?” Peter chuckled, throwing out his arms out to encompass the rows upon rows of shelves and crates loaded up with stolen goods. It was only one of the many places they stored the loot they planned on selling at a later time should work become scarce. “He knew an old friend must’ve been stealing the goods from the other warehouses because none of the old traps were ever triggered. They were good traps too. Took me a hell of a long time to reinvent everything.”

Barm swore. Then again, voice trembling with fear and frustration. “ _Why_ are you helping him?! How much is he paying you? I can pay _double_.”

“With what? The loot you already stole from us?”

There was another awkward pause as Barm finally realized what the problem was here. “…You’re Yondu’s kid, aren’t you?”

Peter’s eyes narrowed slightly. The boy was finally old enough to understand that the Captain needed to be shown respect at all times, especially in the face of an enemy, but it was obvious that the idea of ‘belonging’ to the man who abducted him still irked him. 

“I know we’ve only just met,” Peter replied, completely side-stepping the question, “but I’m going to hand you over to your old pals now. I guess the only kind of person they consider worse than a deserter is someone who has the audacity to steal from them, and so they’re _real_ eager to reacquaint themselves with you, Mr. Barm.”

“Wait!” Bram hollered, but already the other Ravagers came crawling out of the woodwork, crowding up around the edge of the pit to stare down at their quarry. They’d let Peter have his moment of glory, some of them even going so far as to give the boy a pat on the back as he tried to move out of their way, and now they wanted blood.

Bram was going to regret double-crossing them.

Kraglin wanted to get a hit in himself once they hauled the traitor out of that hellhole, but he found himself trailing after Peter instead. He knew Yondu had given the kid a new project a while ago, one that required various trips at odd intervals in an M-ship with Tullk and Medrick, but he hadn’t discovered the boy was making traps until Peter waltzed into mess hall one day to inform them that the sensors he’d left on Naturi had finally picked up on something. Tullk looked pleased but Yondu had suddenly gone awfully quiet, as though he wasn’t about to get his hopes up over Peter’s bizarre announcement. Then they set a course for Naturi and now here they were, the fruit of Peter’s labors fresh for the picking.

A part of Kraglin wondered why Yondu hadn’t informed him of Peter’s project earlier, but he supposed the man hadn’t been too confident that it would work. After all, while Kraglin knew that the inventory at several of their warehouses hadn’t been up to par with his calculations lately, it was hard to keep everything properly guarded when they needed all of their manpower aboard the Eclector. That’s why their warehouses were heavily booby-trapped and half-buried underground on godforsaken planets like this. There was little they could do to stop would-be thieves if said thieves were crafty enough to get around their traps.

But Peter’s trap had proven to be on a level all its own. Kraglin didn’t know why there was already so much blood smeared on the ground or how Bram had ended up in that pit, but he didn’t need to understand the inner workings of the devilish device to recognize a job well done.

He gave Peter a hearty pat on the shoulder to show his appreciation. “You’re gonna be everybody’s best friend for while yet.”

“I guess so,” the boy said absently, staring at the bloody tiles. “To be honest, I didn’t realize it was going to be this…messy. I should’ve gone with the rope instead of the wire.”

“Nah,” Kraglin said, “We can clean this up, no problem.”

Peter grinned.

Someone slowly clapped behind them and they both turned to watch as Yondu finally materialized from wherever the hell he’d been lurking. Knowing him, he was probably checking to see if his favorite bits of treasure were relatively unharmed. Which they probably were. He looked mighty pleased.

“That’s some rare talent you got there, son,” Yondu chuckled, glancing up at the gravity mine. “You’re gonna grow up to be a fine young man.”

A shout went up among the men, a little cheer as they finally hauled Bram out of the pit. They stepped back then to make a circle around him and began taking turns hitting and kicking him.

Down one of the aisles, someone proclaimed that they’d found a hook.

Peter furrowed his brow for a moment but then relaxed his features, slapping on a stoic expression as he turned to Yondu and said. “Do we still have a deal?”

Kraglin laughed. It was kind of funny to see a boy his age acting so serious. Peter pointedly ignored him.

“Already transferred you the units.”

Though Peter was paid the same amount as any crew member for the job he undertook, the kid hadn’t really dented his wages yet because he wasn’t necessarily old enough to spend his units in the kind of places the crew frequented in their spare time. Kraglin therefore had no idea what the kid wanted the extra units for.

Yondu already knew what Kraglin was thinking, so he grinned and said, “He’s saving up to buy the Milano.”

Well…that was one hell of an expensive venture. Just about everyone on the Eclector was already ‘assigned’ an M-ship, but they had to buy one outright if they wanted to come and go as they pleased between large jobs.

Kraglin couldn’t say he was surprised by this revelation. Even though Peter had finally fallen into line with their sorry lot, he was sill ultimately living with them against his will. It was only natural that he’d want to have the freedom of flying off on his own once he was old enough. Of course, ‘ _once a Ravager, **always** a Ravager_ ’, so it remained to be seen whether Peter would return regularly like he was obligated to or if he’d become a deserter like Bram.

“Milano’s kinda old,” Kraglin said, scratching his chin. “Transmitter’s almost completely shot.”

“Tullk said he’ll show me how to fix it,” Peter replied. He glanced once in Bram’s direction and then, sensing the frenzied escalation of the men, quickly averted his gaze. “I’m heading back to the ship. This heat is killing me.”

 _Oh_ , Kraglin thought suddenly.

The kid was getting cold feet.

Couldn’t blame him necessarily. He was still just a boy. He’d already seen his fair share of fights aboard the Eclector, but Peter had never watched them torture someone before. He hadn’t had the chance to develop a stomach for it yet.

But he needed to.

Kraglin and Yondu shared a knowing look just as Peter turned away. Yondu caught the kid gently by the arm just as he was about to go and said. “Heat ain’t gonna hurt you, boy. Sit with me a while. Relax…”

A panicked look crossed Peter’s face but he allowed Yondu to lead him over to a short stack of crates. They sat down together on top of them, Peter quickly schooling his features again as he watched chaos unfold before his very eyes.

It took them a couple of hours to finish Barm off…

Slowly, Kraglin returned to the present, now acutely aware of the old man eyeing him up and the girl gently holding his hand. They were waiting for his answer.

Against his better judgement, he tells them.

“Peter used to build traps for our warehouses,” he explains. “First time he caught somebody, he tagged along to watch us kill ’im.”

The corner of Ego’s lip curls in something akin to satisfaction. Looks a little hungry too, like Kraglin’s thrown a bit of tinder into a roaring inferno. “And?” he asks expectantly.

With his own sense of smug satisfaction, Kraglin says, “He hated every minute of it.”

 _That_ wipes the smirk right off the bastard’s face. “…What?”

“Pete’s clever,” Kraglin replies. The man’s met the kid, so he’s surprised he has to spell it out for him. “He ain’t cruel. A liar and a cheat, sure, but not a jackass like you.”

“But a liar,” Ego carefully points out, picking apart Kraglin’s words. “And a cheat…I bet he hurt a lot of people in your line of work.”

Kraglin frowns. “Well, yeah, but—”

“Left a lot of broken hearts in his wake too, didn’t he?” the man interjects, warming up to this new narrative. “I tracked down a few of his old pals after I found out about the incident on Xandar, you see. ‘Star Lord’s’ got quite the reputation. There’s a lot of people that still hate him, and with good reason.”

Certainly, but the only kind of people Peter genuinely enjoyed pissing off were usually rival thieves. He had a nasty habit of stabbing people in the back too, although not in any way that would actually kill them.

The kid had been awfully greedy once upon a time.

“So maybe he wasn’t cruel by _your_ standards,” Ego says, “But the potential is certainly there. I’m sure if Yondu hadn’t been so soft on him, he’d be as bad as his girlfriend was when she worked with Thanos.”

Kraglin’s not so sure about that. They’d been rough with Peter when he was small. Tried to stomp out any sign of sentiment the second they got a whiff of it, but the kid’s conscience persisted.

Probably because his momma gave it to him.

“Cry all you want,” Kraglin sighs, growing weary of this bastard’s backward logic, “I just got one thing left to say.”

Ego arches an eyebrow at him, mildly insulted. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” Kraglin runs his tongue along his molars, pressing a bit more dirt out of the grooves before he spits it out on the ground. “Pete takes after his mother.”

Mantis squeezes his hand.

Kraglin squeezes it back gently and then releases it, letting it hang loose at his side, kind of resigned to whatever’s going to happen to him next. He’s suffered some truly horrifying situations both before and during his time as a Ravager. Hell, he survived a mutiny not too long ago, one he stupidly instigated himself.

As far as he’s concerned, he’s living on borrowed time.

Ego purses his lips together. Looks like he just sucked on one of those yellow candies Peter liked so much as a kid, the kind Kraglin couldn’t even stand. Then he sighs, as though a grave injustice had been just committed against him, and reaches under the folds of his cape.

Kraglin is completely stunned when the man whips out the Zune, wired earbuds wrapped tightly around it in a neat little coil. What surprises him even more is the pristine condition that it’s in, considering it’d been tucked away in a flimsy cardboard box on the ship.

This suggests, perhaps, that even though their ship’s been sunk, it might still be in pristine condition itself.

Kraglin slaps on his poker face and doesn’t budge a muscle.

“Is this Peter’s?” Ego asks curiously, slowly unwinding the earbuds.

“No,” Kraglin says. “It belongs to the Captain.”

“Huh.” Ego turns it on, glancing down at the screen. Kraglin doesn’t know which song pops up first, but Ego quickly switches to the next title as soon as he sees it. Then another, until finally turning it off. “It only has Terran songs.”

“We got a taste for it,” Kraglin shrugs, which is at least somewhat true. Peter’s music was catchy.

“Fine…but maybe it’s a gift?” Ego suggests, glancing back up at him. There’s too much certainty in that statement for it to be a real question. “For Peter, perhaps?”

Kraglin gaps for a moment. “Well…I _guess_.”

“This might help then…” Ego mumbles, more to himself than anyone else. Then he waves his hand at the ground. Kraglin’s feet suddenly sink half an inch into the earth. “Mantis—his mind, if you’d please?”

Mantis flinches at the order, antennae glowing as she says, “You will forget everything about this conversation.”

Kraglin blinks in confusion before he’s pulled under again, dragged down, down, _down_ the devil’s throat into the belly of the beast.

The trip back somehow feels shorter. He drops heavily to the floor of his cell from the gaping hole in the ceiling, watching in mild fascination as it seals itself back up again.

Startled, his fellow prisoners whip their heads in his direction, questions clear in their eyes.

“I…I don’t remember anything,” he says, but he stares long and hard at each of them in turn before he clambers onto his mattress, sore from the trip.

In truth, he remembers all of it.

Because that darling girl was very careful not to touch his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The GOTG animated series only loosely follows the movies, but I kind of enjoyed the thought of Peter building traps in all of the Ravager's warehouses. You should give the show a look if you're feeling up to it.


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